I’ve never been big on New Years resolutions. The changes I want to make to my life are usually obscured in a uniformly gray cloud of dissatisfaction; I have vague wants that adopt enormous, bleary forms. It’s hard to make practical, reasonable resolutions that one can put to page when that’s the case. It feels a bit like trying to pin an elephant to the wall with a sewing needle.

I can, however, put a couple down for the record. I want to rest more (a perennial favorite) and generally work on making more nurturing choices for myself. I also resolve to write more. For several years I’ve been struggling to keep this blog going. I write for a living, so often when I come home, tired from filing articles at work and editing page proofs, the last thing I want to do is sit back down in front of a computer. Yet, even though it’s hard for me to restart my laptop, words still bubble up in my mind relentlessly. I feel like I’m never not writing. I may have a hard time pinning down my wants and wishes, but everything else in my life easily, readily flows into words. I just have to get myself to keep putting pen to paper. More writing in 2009—that’s my main resolution.

Today is as good a day as any to start. It one of those winter days in Chicago that makes me believe (for a day or so) that I can endure the many more winter days standing between now and spring. It is snowing, which lays a blanket of diaphanous softness over the city. I swear that this kind of snow tempers not just curbs and sharp rooftop angles, but also softens people. I think the snow has an interesting dual effect on the people it encompasses. First, it draws out daydreams and quiet, personal thoughts, beckoning reflection. Watch those on the bus on days like this. They stare into the white static of the snow. The whiteness begs for the decoration of thought, just as an empty page pleads a writer for words and a blank canvass beseeches an artist for paint. People stare not just at the snow but also into the whiteness. It calms us—it is a hypnotic—the gray static coaxes shy ribbons of thought out, splaying them into vast murals of the complicated, beautiful inner lives of us. The snow gives us space to think and a safe cushion on which to place our most delicate, fragile self elements.

The snow also enriches a sense of community. It creates snow globe-sized villages within a large, sometimes-harsh city. I have lived in Chicago for a while. Because of this, it feels like a small city to me. I know it well and can navigate it easily. But in my dreams, Chicago is expansive and unknown, a winding maze, a pastiche of other places I have been and things I have seen. I sometimes wonder if this dream city is more the true city than the small, known one I walk in my waking life. When it snows, I move within a smaller globe and instead of making the city seem tighter and more compact, it makes it seem vast, as though I could keep trudging forever and Chicago would endlessly unfurl itself in three-block bits. The people I encounter in a snow storm like this seem both as familiar and as strange to me as my dream people, but there is a stronger intimacy—as if we finally acknowledge that none of us really knows where we’re going (aside from the grocery store or the post office) and that it’s okay to be a little aimless and even a little lost.

It’s 4:35 on a Friday afternoon and I’m stuck in my office. I have a headache. I have an eyelash stuck in my eye. My boss is giving me unsolicited dating advice… again. I’m facing a weeklong business trip to Cleveland. This day will not end.

Last night I dreamed that I was in some sort of vague war. I was walking along a beach with people who were wearing bright swatches of clothing. There was shouting, but instead of bombed buildings, the scene was full of sandcastles in half-crushed ruins, more endangered by a rising tide. I was unfathomably tired in my dream, so I collapsed on a bright red beach towel, but I was unable to sleep. People kept walking by me, talking loudly and laughing sarcastically. I peered at them from behind leaden eyelids. All I wanted to do was to sleep on the beach in the middle of a war zone.

Eventually a good friend came by and rested his hand gently on my head while he conducted a business call in hushed tones. The weight of his palm on my temple and the familiar scent of his suit jacket were soothing balms and I soon drifted out of my dream and into blank sleep.

I woke up with a start this morning, thinking that I was in a hotel. The air had that distinct hotel scent that many people associate with vacation. It smells to me of loneliness. I’ve stayed in a hotel rarely for fun, but frequently for business. Even the particular scent of a Las Vegas mega hotel reminds me of work.

It was a bleak start to the day. I need a new job.

There is nothing less inspiring than a suburban office building wedged in a corporate park between an airport and an expressway. Today is my first day in a new office and it is killing a sister.

I would like to thank the flagrant incompetence of our local phone company for my summer of 2008. This past spring, the company I work for purchased two more Chicagoland magazines and through a string of miscommunications and office sublet complications, we had no choice but to work from our homes this summer. The phone provider apparently was unable to install a phone system into our new office in less than 90 days. It has been lovely to once be on the benefiting end of a telecommunications nightmare, but the glory days have ended; I am back to the commute, back to the “eccentric” co-workers and back to the constant interruptions.

When you spend a lot of time alone, you start to think differently. This summer, I felt like I was thinking less. It was different from being thoughtless, but the silence enshrouding me entered my mind and expanded like a deep inhalation. At first, I fought against this because it felt like a dulling of senses; I worried that I was losing something vital. Maybe I was depressed or tired, I thought. But then I accepted it for what it is—a space that probably soon would be filled again with sound and noise, with a cavalcade of triviality.

I accepted this summer as a gift given to me by a dysfunctional communications company. It was a rest, a much-needed break from a long commute and interpersonal pressures; it was a simple summer. Between travel and editorial duties, my job is taxing. I haven’t had the mental reserves in the past year or so to write much on my own terms and when you move away from doing what you love, you get yourself in trouble. Discontent is measured in the space between where you are now and that other place – your heart’s place.

No heart resides in an office with white walls and a parking lot view. When I got off the bus today and walked into my office, I felt instantly sedated and institutionalized. Just a while ago one of my new co-workers popped her head into my office for no reason whatsoever and said, “114 days until Christmas!”

Confused, I smiled awkwardly.

“I programmed my voicemail so that whenever someone calls me between September 1 and Christmas, they get the countdown,” she explained with pride. I tried to look congenial.

Ten minutes later another coworker sent me an e-mail from three offices down asking me if the phone repair man working on our already broken new phone system is cute. When I responded that I hadn’t paid attention because I’M WORKING, she wrote back saying, “That’s okay! I already have a building boyfriend!” I did not respond. Unprompted, she replied, “the building manager!” and included a winky-face emoticon. Apparently, the building manager made an extremely lewd comment to her last week, which through her immense powers of distortion, she somehow internalized as complimentary.

Our new administrative assistant also reprimanded me for putting dishes away in the wrong cabinet. She called me “silly.”

I’m trying to stay positive and to find amusement in these little episodes so that I do not totally lose my mind, but day one has been rough goings...

My apartment is decorated with odd objects in various stages of dilapidation. My dining room chairs have broken backs and most of the paintings hanging on walls are captured in battered frames. I’ve lived in eight places in ten years and my furniture bears battle wounds; I have been an avalanche, accumulating and dragging my belongings with me down the rough slope of my 20s. I feel that I owe my tired old couch an apology.

I know that it’s probably a character flaw to honor my belongings, but I love almost every item that I own. I select objects not because they are necessarily practical or because they fall into a predetermined color scheme, but because they speak to me. I recently came across a small antique painting of an ocean at night. There is a lighthouse casting a luminary pool across an oil dark sea. Wispy clouds are in the sky, but the stars and the moon pierce through. There are cliffs; it is darkly romantic. I bought the painting for a few dollars and hung it next to my bed so that it is the last thing I see before I fall asleep.

I’ve attempted to find commonality in the objects I love. I’ve found a few organizing traits. First, I gravitate to old things. I prefer objects that have been owned before me, that show signs of use and life. I’m also drawn to deep, rich colors and to intricate, natural patterns. I don’t worry about whether or not things match, but whether or not I feel a connection to them.

The people I love are excellent at selecting things that I’ll love. This makes me very happy. My mom, in particular, has a knack for finding things that will enchant me. She recently came to my apartment bearing two old aluminum dishes found at a flea market, both dull silver, the color of moonlight, dressed with etchings of flowers and grape vines. They are sculpted with scalloped edges that undulate softly like waves in a pool. I immediately loved them.

I am especially thankful when people bring me objects from their travels. My aunt, uncle and cousin recently took a trip to Turkey and they brought me back an earthen vase from Ephesus. It is painted with a bright floral pattern around the middle, while the top and bottom are glazed black. It is cool to the touch and smooth. Even though it is small, it has a grand and pleasing presence. A friend who spent a summer in Armenia brought me a roughly hewn clay pitcher with set of three small cups out of which it’s traditional to serve vodka. I have it sitting on my covered radiator, next to a sepia-toned photograph of a Native American woman herding sheep under a wide-open sky. I found the picture in a gift store in Long Beach.

I own a rice bowl that came from a Japanese WWII war ship. My grandmother gave it to me last year, about a month or so before she died. One of her several suitors, a man who was a high-ranking captain, gave it to her. He took the bowl from the ship after U.S. troops boarded. If you look closely at the porcelain interior, you can see small dents made by the repeated pounding of chopsticks. My favorite piece of jewelry is a ring that this same Captain brought from Mexico for my grandmother. He purchased it in the 1940s from a woman at a small market. It is bohemian looking, large and silver, shaped like a turtle, with a beautiful piece of turquoise set as the shell. I love it and wear it often. I sometimes wonder what happened to this man who sought my grandmother, but ultimately was rebuffed. I feel an odd connection to him as the unintended owner of his beautiful gifts of adoration. I am sure that he is gone by now; I think he was older than my grandmother. And Gram also is gone. I sit with my rice bowl and my pretty ring and feel caught in a strange net of connections that spanned several continents and funneled down to me, in my Chicago home. I feel honored and humbled by these relics of lives lived before my own, of world travels, wars and an abruptly ended courtship.

Some items in my home are family heirlooms and some are gifts. Some are simply things that I have purchased for myself because I like them, but everything has a story. If a friend came into my home and picked up a plate, I could tell him why I own it and what I like about it. I think this is important. Too often, we are content to live amongst accumulated things that have no meaning or to which we feel no connection. I’m not saying that I feel strongly connected to my toaster or to my garbage can, or that it’s necessary or even desirable to love everything you own, but contentment rises from surrounding yourself with cherished possessions. As I look at them, use them, live with them, they reconnect me to the Important Things; family, friends, love and the simple joy that comes from finding beauty in a thing, even a torn picture or a broken chair.

I recently moved. I’m in a transitional phase. And I hate the word “phase” when applied to the arc of a life, but I can’t think of another word. Era is too epic. Moment is too narrow. I’ll just say that I now live alone in a pretty apartment in a quiet, mostly-immigrant-inhabited neighborhood on the city’s northwest side. I’ve moved a lot in my life, and it usually takes me a while to take to a new home (I’m a hard sell), but this place is different. I immediately felt at ease in this apartment; it is where I am supposed to be right now and that conviction is something worth celebrating. It’s rare to feel that you’re in the right place at the right time. It’s far too rare that you feel like you’re doing anything right.

“The point is now that I found a home—or a hole in the ground, as you will… My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light.” (I am re-reading Invisible Man.)

There is a large tree outside my window. Its trunk is covered with ivy and in the morning, the ivy’s dew catches the Eastern Sun and light caught in water becomes a million little illuminated globes hanging on a tree trunk. Inside, I have a chandelier in my dining room. It hangs heavily above my table, six dangling crystals per a candle, electrically lit. I turn it on, sometimes, just because it pleases me to have such a thing. I also have a pair of stained-glass windows in my living room. The design is simple; two plants growing out of the Earth, stretching to the Sun. My rooms are well lit and lovely for it.

Sometimes friends deride me for not leaving Chicago. Sometimes I question why I stay. I think that I don’t leave because, firstly, Chicago is my home. It is not where I was born, but it is where I feel most fully myself and that is how I define a home. Leaving a home is not an easy decision to make—sometimes people forget this. After all, I’ve put a lot into this city and it has put a lot into me.

Living alone suits me well. It’s true that I miss my roommates and that I’ve started talking to myself more than is likely healthy. I’ve progressed from half-verbal mutterings (“Where are…? Oh, right.”) to complete sentences in which I address myself by my first name, ask questions of myself and then, finally, answer myself. I think I’m okay with this.

I was downtown recently, waiting for a friend. I sat hunched on a bench, my elbows on my knees, my hands loose, barely intertwined, half-open. It was hot outside, but there was a breeze. Suddenly, something was in my hand. Gingerly, I closed my palm around a small, rough thing. I opened my palm. It was a dry leaf… a nothing, a tiny occurrence, curved perfectly into the crease of my half-open hand. This little, negligible bit of nothing found my hand, sought in my hand a resting place, a place, in my hand, where it would go no further.

I will eventually leave this apartment, but for now, it is the place where I choose to rest, to go no further. It is the place I sought out. I blew into it, have curled myself into its eves. To find a home is a grace bestowed, a thing of beauty and I am happy for this.

I’m a big proponent of public transportation for all the normal reasons like collectively lessening our environmental impact and saving on fuel costs. I’m also, however, a fan of public transportation because I think it is good for people to be forced to sit close and stare at one another on a daily basis.

There is no better instructor in empathy than a city bus. Where else except public transit do you watch people sleep or notice how people act when they’re staring out the window preoccupied? A distant stare begs questions, such as, “What’s he thinking about?” or “She looks sad… why?” Holding these questions in our heads and honestly considering them paves a fast track a more conscious society.

But all that said, sometimes a bus will just break your spirit. My office has moved recently to a new, equally inconvenient suburban location. My commute now entails getting on the Chicago subway system, then transferring to a Pace suburban transit bus, which drops me on a slim ribbon of gravel off a busy road near O’Hare Airport with no intersection in sight. Once the bus pulls away, I stand forlorn, clutching my bag against my stomach, psyching myself up to make a mad dash across four lanes of Chicago morning rush-hour traffic. I whimpered the first time the bus pulled away and the cloud of gravel dust settled around me. “Oh……… shit.”

My first journey to the new office was disastrous. When you take a city bus, all the stops are neatly marked and usually there’s more than six inches between you and traffic. If you get off at the wrong stop, you simply cross the street to another clearly marked bus stop and wait about five to 20 minutes for the next bus to swing by. On Pace, however, there are few marked stops and you might have an hour before the next bus comes by. You really don’t want to miss your stop.

Knowing this, I was a little trigger-happy on the first rainy morning of my new commute and I accidentally de-bussed myself a stop early. I realized my mistake quickly as the bus pulled away. Another woman had gotten off at the same stop. “Is this River Road and Touhy?” I asked her. “Oh no,” she said looking very concerned. “I think that is the next stop. It’s…. way up there…” I thanked her and she wished me luck a little too sincerely.

I started walking along the gravel plank. A car whooshed by and splattered my legs with mud. A red pickup came by and got me again. Sighing, I decided the better option would be to cross the street and walk through a parking lot. After nearly biting it on my quick run across the street, I was happy to be walking on pavement. It started to drizzle, which I thought wouldn’t be a bad thing because it would at least clean the mud off my legs.

I walked. And walked. I passed another weary-looking pedestrian in a parking lot and glanced up at him, hopeful for a bit of rainy morning camaraderie, but it was not to be; the man was talking to himself and not in an endearing, eccentric way. No, he was talking to himself in the, “I just intentionally killed two cats and chain smoked a carton of menthols” way. He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. I looked down and picked up my pace.

Finally, I came to an epic suburban Chicago landmark: A 294 overpass. I knew my new office building would be just on the other side of this massive structure and sure enough, I could spy it through the concrete beams, a standard corporate office building, shiny as a dull penny, adorned with several sagging shrubs and a few token smokers on a bench, exiled and surly. It was a sight for sore eyes.

I assessed the underpass. It was under construction, but there were no workers present to tell me not to walk through. There were no sidewalks, no margins of error. The best option was to squeeze myself between a row of cement barricades and the cool, moldy underpass structure. The path was filled with water at points, but I could see my office building! It was too late to turn around. The smart Erin would have stayed put and called one of her co-workers to come rescue her in a car. The Erin who usually wins these debates, however, argued, “But I can see the building. I will make this crossing. I can do it if I’m careful.” As a kid, I always drowned fording the river in Oregon Trail.

I took a step. Mud squeezed between my toes. Luckily, I was wearing shorts and flip-flops because we were moving stuff in the office that day, not heels and not dress pants. The mud squelched as I pulled my foot up and sucked off my flip-flop. “Shit!” I swore and bent down to extract my shoe from the deep mud. A car whizzed by so close to my face that I almost lost my balance in the force of its speed. I took another step.

After slow progress, I had made it to the center of the underpass. The air choked me with its damp, moldy scent. I was covered in mud from toe to knee and also had mud on my hands and face from constantly bending down and extracting my shoe. I had been honked at five times and had almost slipped into oncoming traffic twice. Three times I had questioned my sanity, twice I had nearly broken down into tears and once I fell into a manic laughing fit that left me winded and weak. Now I faced a veritable lake. My phone rang; my publisher was calling. I told him I’d have to call him back and when he asked if I was okay I said, “well… I’ll… umm… I’m just going to have to call you back. I’m in a bit of a situation, but don’t worry.” He worried.

From the edge of the underpass, things hadn’t looked quite so bad. The water looked shallow and like I might be able to step on over the deepest parts. I now faced the ultimate error in my judgment and I was going to have to walk through water. Straight up.

I said a quick prayer and took a tentative step. My foot disappeared into the dark scummy water. It was so cold that it took my breath away. A cigarette butt floated by, cautiously circumventing my ankle. The squelching noise of my progress was obscene.

I had just told myself that it wasn’t so bad, that I could do this, for real, when I almost lost it. I looked down and saw a dead pigeon, mud caked between its splayed feathers, rotting just an inch or two from my left foot. I gasped and lifted my foot. Another car drove by and honked. I turned, and hobnobbing with insanity, I yelled, “I know! OKAY? I KNOW! This was a BAD IDEA! Just… just… just LEAVE ME ALONE!” I might also have shaken my fist at the car, which already was about two miles down the road.

As I was nearing the edge of the lake, I realized how emotionally drained my walk had left me. I’d used every mental trick to keep myself going. I’d told myself that people, right at that moment, were walking through far worse messes. I said, “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just mud and rot. It’s all natural.” I’d told myself that this was character building and that my life was nothing if not interesting. I told myself that I’d write a letter to the city of Des Plaines, begging them for some sidewalks, for goodness sake. I told myself that things could, as always, be worse. I told myself many things.

In my heart, though, was one single thought: “You are an idiot.” This thought had many attendants like, “You could have died under 294 in the suburbs, next to the pigeon,” and “You might have contracted a weird foot disease,” and “All this to get to a job where you write about oil regulations and transmissions.” But again, the umbrella thought was my own idiocy and a general reflection on other times my “fierce independence” has nearly been the end of me.

Finally, though, I emerged, victorious. I was a mud monster and my nerves were rattled, but I laughed and raised a fist in the air, “HA!” I said, allowing myself a small, but satisfying, moment of victory. Then I quickly realized how I looked and scanned the area for a place to come clean before I walked into our new office suite with its white walls and fresh carpet. It looked like my best bet was a Shell gas station across the street.

I trudged to the station and saw that it had an outdoor bathroom, which was perfect given my state. Unfortunately, I needed a key from the attendant. I sloshed to the edge of the booth and stuck my head around the corner, not wanting to dirty the floor. “Uh, excuse me sir, but can I have the bathroom key?”

Gas station attendant, suspiciously: “What happen to you?”
Me: “I had… issues.”
Attendant: “You no go in bathroom.”
Me: “I HAVE to go in bathroom. It’s an emergency. I’ll clean up, I promise.”

The attendant stared at me with hard eyes and shook his head. I was ready to start lying. My first lie would be, “I took a bad fall and need to make sure my knee is okay.” If that didn’t work, I would add, “I’m pregnant and it’s an emergency.” That lie would be frowned upon from above, but my very last resort would be tears and I didn’t think I could conjure them without laughing first. My plight was too ridiculous.

Luckily, the attendant let me have the key before I resorted to lies. In the dirty, littered, unisex outdoor bathroom, I did my best to clean up. I nearly lost my balance a couple of times when I had one foot or another up in the sink. Once, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and the image of my muddy leg in the bathroom sink, my hair falling across my face, which also was somehow streaked with mud, was just too much. I put the seat down on the toilet, sat and laughed until those tears finally came.

Thirty minutes later I walked into the office, all evidence of my brush with death erased. My boss said, “So, how’d the bus work out for you this morning?”

Me: “It didn’t.”

She asked for elaboration, but I just couldn’t muster the words or the strength. Another co-worker walked in and said, “Hi! How was the bus?”

Me: “BAD.”

My two co-workers looked at one another. My boss said quietly, reverently, “I think something happened to Erin…”

Me: “Yes….”

I travel often and in the past three months, I’ve found myself at different coasts: The Gulf Coast in Alabama, the Pacific Coast in Southern California and the Atlantic coast in New York. I live near Lake Michigan, which is a lake that plays a sea, so I count this as a fourth coast.

I am deeply attracted to water, to the very edges of horizons and the ends of land. Someone once told me that this is because I have a lot of water in my personality. I don’t believe in astrology, fortune telling or the like, but I do believe that there are places, people and things we gravitate toward unknowingly and for me, one of these elements is water. It pulls at me and when I’m away from it, I become restless like a river trying to find the sea.

There is no greater peace than a walk on a beach and all are so different. Take, for instance, the Gulf Coast in Alabama. Water there is an emerald green, frothy and thick, dark and roiling. It is beautiful water and the waves are fast and muscular. The beach I know there is coated with broken shells, as if the sea had coughed violently and freckled the sand, forming a kind of jeweled mosaic, which is periodically studded with old man bellies rising from the sand, wiry haired, draped with gold chains, and large old lady chests clad in ruffled floral bathing suits. Old men and ladies alike lay sprawled in almost indecent postures, looking very still and very much like the driftwood and bands of kelp that escaped the rough tide and after all that struggling, can do nothing but drink in stillness and rest.

I returned at night to walk the same Gulf beach. As a city dweller, I’m always shocked at the darkness of sparsely populated areas. It is a dark that leaves you winded – an invasive dark that creeps in and makes you question whether or not you are even still visible. One’s eyes always struggle against darkness until that point when they accept that the light they do have really is all they’re going to get. When my eyes stopped fighting, I began to see inky forms: White crests of waves breaking, spidery light webs between clouds and distant lit windows.

A walk along the beach has a way of sucking thought from your depths, floating it to the surface. I think this is because the rhythm of tide mimics thought itself; powerful thoughts splay themselves out upon sand, sinking back, but leaving the limits of their reaches damply marked. Lesser waves lap upon these prints, echoing big thoughts---nuances are laid. On the Alabama coast, this process is fast and strong. The waves of the Pacific, however, are expansive exhalations spread gracefully across sand, like the laying of a sheet over a bed, or the release of a sigh. Grand thoughts can be cast against this expanse--- large and lovely thoughts that slowly unfurl and flow into delicate rivulets of meaning.

I believe there is value to walking on solid land and feeling its permanence under your feet, but I think that we often seek this solidity without stopping to think whether or not it is what we need. I know there is as great a value in motion as there is in stillness and the process of thinking thoughts and making decisions requires striking a balance between the things in us that run and the things that rest. The hard part isn’t so much reaching this balance, but separating the running and resting outside of us from motion and stillness within. Maybe this is why I like beaches; there is clarity. Water moves, land rests. The delineation is clear. Reaching decisions, is a clumsy, human process, but our imperfect quest for understanding is sewn together with thin threads of grace. Walking along these threads is our best bet, I think.