Ok I know I haven't posted in a while, sorry busy with work, love, life etc. So to catch everyone up I'm living in this intentional community called Surrealestate in Bushwick Brooklyn.
When I moved in at the end of May I was living on the first floor. Though part of the house (three stories in all) 13-1 is not part of Surrealestate. Some call it Succeedestate because well they succeeded a while ago from the other two floor and the intentional community.
That floor was a disaster to live on. The first week of residing in the building I attempted to clean the most used communal bathroom which I was betting had either been deemed a space for some sick art show or a science experiment – either way it had to be detailed. Hours later it looked just as it did when I started the clean up project. No dice – too many people and not enough of them cleaning.
Other social drama made living there a lesson learned in what not to do so at the end of August I moved upstairs.
After being voted onto the island as it were, I’ve been living in a larger and much cleaner room with two windows and a loft for storage space. Brilliant. With a few exceptions. The people who lived here before had a very open door policy so my room is hang out central a lot of the time – and my windows look out onto the back porch – i.e. the ongoing party that is Surrealestate.
Other than that, the house drama has not stopped, just changed in its tempo – and somewhat important – the way people deal with it.
Classic me I jumped into this situation without knowing what I was getting into. Learn as you go seems to be something I’m still doing and not really thinking about enough. Oh well, something else to work on.
Alright so – intentional community. What intention – well if you ask me they are still figuring that out. I would say at the moment it is mostly to party. But they do work on consensus based system and not knowing what that was at first, I’m learning quickly.
Honestly, I think at this point I am more of a fan of voting than I’ve ever been. However I will say that I like how respectful people can be of others and how they make it a large point to include everyone’s view points in the decision making process.
Downside – still living with a crap load of people who don’t really like cleaning up after themselves and like drama way too much.
Upside – the people here are mostly very cool, really loving and very fun to be around. It is great living with a bunch of cool people and I do enjoy coming home…most of the time.
Growing up I always wanted to have tons of brothers and sisters running around – I guess I got my wish
Work is good, although I don’t really have enough of it right now. I’m taking a trip to Ireland and England in September so that should be fun. It will be another first for my New Years list of firsts - Ireland and staying in a Hostel. Never been to Ireland and never stayed in a Hostel before.
Happy to say that I was also able to provide my Mother with the opportunity to go to Paris again. She left this evening and hopefully will have a great time with Mark her husband on their tour of France.
In other news I’m really, really happy in Brooklyn and living the life I’ve made for myself here. Of course I still miss my friends in other places, but I’m still able to get back to NC at least to see a lot of them which I’m consistently grateful for.
I’ll post pictures from my trip to Greece in July soon as well as my trip to Ireland and England at the end of September.
Oh and my pictures for Restaurant Guru.com are up as well.
For pics please visit www.flickr.com/lifeartfriends/
I promise to write more often as long as you all are still reading this.
Hugs to everyone!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Finally Peaceful
Hello All,
I've been told that some of my friends actually read this blog of mine, so I thought I would check in and post some new and happy news.
What's new?
I'm working a ton. This whole month I fly out to Paris each trip I have. No Amsterdam at the moment, but that suits me just fine. More chances to practice my French and more bottles of Vin Rouge to try :)
Other than that, I'm moving to Brooklyn. I know it is a thing with me, if I'm not happy somewhere, I deal for a few months and then pick up and leave. I'm somewhere around 25 moves in the last nine years - but one of these times I'm going to settle down. Some day - but not today :)
I'll post soon about the new place (I'm so excited about it but haven't actually signed anything yet so I don't want to jinx it by writing about it).
NY is good, but not what I expected. Someone said to me "You move to NY not so much to stay there, but to see if you can survive it. And you have, brilliantly." This made me feel a lot better and I think it is somewhat true. I had wanted to live in NYC for years - since I was quite young and though I had tried to be practical about it, still had a somewhat romantic outlook on the place when I moved there in November. Months later I have been through the puppy love phase, moved on to the hating it phase, went through the disappointed and bitter phase and now I've moved on to the "it is what it is, I'll make the best of it, love what I can about it, and eventually move back to NC" phase. Much happier with this last outlook.
Trying to convince myself that NY really was the Bohemian paradise I always dreamed it would be and I wasn't there enough, cool enough, or looking hard enough to find it was exhausting and frustrating in the extreme. Although I might not have found something that is indeed out there and I may not be cool enough to fit into it whatever that IT is - I'm ok with that and have stopped stressing over a lost dream.
Now I've found a few friends, some cool artists and have settled into a more accurate reality of NY I think.
NC - still loving it. Something about this place keeps me coming back. Yes it is safe and I do have tons of friends and family here that I miss when I'm away, but I also find that it has some cultural offerings if you will that so many other places don't.
I've decided that whenever this company is done with me (I'm so not going to be done with them first - I LOVE my job) that I will move back to NC and try my best to do the settling down thing I've been avoiding - or trying desperately to avoid - for years.
It isn't going to happen tomorrow, but I found that once I made the decision to move back here I felt at peace with where I am now and what I'm doing, more so than I had in months.
Other than that - hmmmm. Love life = me and only me. I'm very happy with this and happy to keep it that way for the foreseeable future.
Divorced? No not yet and I've decided once again to let him handle the paperwork and the cost. I'm probably going to change my mind about this again, but for now, I'm ok with it. No need to get divorced this second, I'm not in a terrible hurry. Not yet anyway :)
Travel? Yep I'm going to Greece in June to shoot a wedding with my good friend Danielle and then kick around a few islands for a couple of days.
Then in September I'm off to Bali (hopefully stopping off in Hong Kong for two days) with my good friend Steve. I'm really thrilled about this trip because I've dreamed of going to Bali for years! I would love to just take months to backpack around Bali and Thailand and hit more of China on the way back to the states, but sadly that will have to wait for another time.
All in all, life is good. My friends are amazing, my family as supportive and loving as ever and my dog though not listening to me anymore (my mother has way more treats in her pockets than I ever do) loves me and seems happy to see me when I can get home to hang with her.
Hugs to everyone, and hopefully I'll catch up with all of you in one of the cities I frequent soon! :)
I've been told that some of my friends actually read this blog of mine, so I thought I would check in and post some new and happy news.
What's new?
I'm working a ton. This whole month I fly out to Paris each trip I have. No Amsterdam at the moment, but that suits me just fine. More chances to practice my French and more bottles of Vin Rouge to try :)
Other than that, I'm moving to Brooklyn. I know it is a thing with me, if I'm not happy somewhere, I deal for a few months and then pick up and leave. I'm somewhere around 25 moves in the last nine years - but one of these times I'm going to settle down. Some day - but not today :)
I'll post soon about the new place (I'm so excited about it but haven't actually signed anything yet so I don't want to jinx it by writing about it).
NY is good, but not what I expected. Someone said to me "You move to NY not so much to stay there, but to see if you can survive it. And you have, brilliantly." This made me feel a lot better and I think it is somewhat true. I had wanted to live in NYC for years - since I was quite young and though I had tried to be practical about it, still had a somewhat romantic outlook on the place when I moved there in November. Months later I have been through the puppy love phase, moved on to the hating it phase, went through the disappointed and bitter phase and now I've moved on to the "it is what it is, I'll make the best of it, love what I can about it, and eventually move back to NC" phase. Much happier with this last outlook.
Trying to convince myself that NY really was the Bohemian paradise I always dreamed it would be and I wasn't there enough, cool enough, or looking hard enough to find it was exhausting and frustrating in the extreme. Although I might not have found something that is indeed out there and I may not be cool enough to fit into it whatever that IT is - I'm ok with that and have stopped stressing over a lost dream.
Now I've found a few friends, some cool artists and have settled into a more accurate reality of NY I think.
NC - still loving it. Something about this place keeps me coming back. Yes it is safe and I do have tons of friends and family here that I miss when I'm away, but I also find that it has some cultural offerings if you will that so many other places don't.
I've decided that whenever this company is done with me (I'm so not going to be done with them first - I LOVE my job) that I will move back to NC and try my best to do the settling down thing I've been avoiding - or trying desperately to avoid - for years.
It isn't going to happen tomorrow, but I found that once I made the decision to move back here I felt at peace with where I am now and what I'm doing, more so than I had in months.
Other than that - hmmmm. Love life = me and only me. I'm very happy with this and happy to keep it that way for the foreseeable future.
Divorced? No not yet and I've decided once again to let him handle the paperwork and the cost. I'm probably going to change my mind about this again, but for now, I'm ok with it. No need to get divorced this second, I'm not in a terrible hurry. Not yet anyway :)
Travel? Yep I'm going to Greece in June to shoot a wedding with my good friend Danielle and then kick around a few islands for a couple of days.
Then in September I'm off to Bali (hopefully stopping off in Hong Kong for two days) with my good friend Steve. I'm really thrilled about this trip because I've dreamed of going to Bali for years! I would love to just take months to backpack around Bali and Thailand and hit more of China on the way back to the states, but sadly that will have to wait for another time.
All in all, life is good. My friends are amazing, my family as supportive and loving as ever and my dog though not listening to me anymore (my mother has way more treats in her pockets than I ever do) loves me and seems happy to see me when I can get home to hang with her.
Hugs to everyone, and hopefully I'll catch up with all of you in one of the cities I frequent soon! :)
Friday, April 10, 2009
Seen On My Corner
In my room I have two windows. One of which is just above my bed. This is where I do most of my thinking, people watching, reading, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes.
In the past few days I have seen some remarkable things out of my window.
The first of which I didn't get a picture of it (damn!) so I will have to just tell you about it.
It was late and this guy stumbling down the street had obviously been drinking for a while. In one hand he carried a brown bag with no doubt a 40 inside. In the other hand he carried a chair I assume he picked up from the community dumping spot just up the way. At first I thought he might have thought the chair a good find and was taking it home. I soon saw that instead he was periodically using it as his personal resting place. He would stumble along for a while then get tired, place the chair wherever he happened to stop, sit down and start chugging more of the 40. With some swearing he got back onto his feat and proceeded to stumble on his way. Priceless!
The second remarkable thing I've seen in the past few days happened this afternoon. It is good Friday and it seems that the local Catholic organization took it upon themselves to have a parade down our street. Hundreds of people singing hymns and a loud speaker mounted on top of a four dour sedan blaring out scripture inbetween the songs. I'm guessing at some of this as it was all in Spanish, but I don't think I'm far off.
The pics above are of the parade.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Tech Issues Solved, Images ready to go :)
Yesterday I finally did it. I bought a new monitor and a calibration tool to edit images.
So far so good.
The monitor was set to Dutch when I started it up so I had to call tech to get it to speak English - but one phone call later I was ready to go.
Here are a few images that I just did from my Dad's g-friends family get together.
Hope you like em :)
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
"Which Bitch Are You?" Quiz
Ok so everyone on Facebook kept sending me this thing to take the quiz "Which Bitch Are You?" So this morning I got fed up with everyone sending it on so I took the quiz.
The whole thing is about ten questions give or take and to my surprise through those ten questions they kinda pegged me with the little blurb they produced at the end:
"You are one fierce bitch. You are very independent and will take no bullshit from anyone but your personality is actually sort of quiet and shy. You are a natural beauty and you are very comfortable with your feminity. You don't feel the need to overdo it or go out of your way to fuss over your looks. You don't want to distract people from what you stand for and the talents you possess. You are very idealistic and will go to any extremes to stand up for what you believe in even if it creates controversy and people don't understand. Relationships can be hard for you sometimes because men feel threatened by you but time again they come running to you and realize that you are actually very sweet and motherly....until they cross you."
Oh and which crazy bitch am I? Sinead O'Connor.
Which is actually also perfect because I adore her music and the song Nothing Compares To You was the first ever music video I saw. You couldn't pull me away from the TV if you had tried. The thought of music put to a video and on TV!!! As a kid that was the ultimate - like seeing god or something.
As I have nothing to eat in the house and I'm starving - I've got to sign off for now.
More news soon.
Hugs to everyone :)
The whole thing is about ten questions give or take and to my surprise through those ten questions they kinda pegged me with the little blurb they produced at the end:
"You are one fierce bitch. You are very independent and will take no bullshit from anyone but your personality is actually sort of quiet and shy. You are a natural beauty and you are very comfortable with your feminity. You don't feel the need to overdo it or go out of your way to fuss over your looks. You don't want to distract people from what you stand for and the talents you possess. You are very idealistic and will go to any extremes to stand up for what you believe in even if it creates controversy and people don't understand. Relationships can be hard for you sometimes because men feel threatened by you but time again they come running to you and realize that you are actually very sweet and motherly....until they cross you."
Oh and which crazy bitch am I? Sinead O'Connor.
Which is actually also perfect because I adore her music and the song Nothing Compares To You was the first ever music video I saw. You couldn't pull me away from the TV if you had tried. The thought of music put to a video and on TV!!! As a kid that was the ultimate - like seeing god or something.
As I have nothing to eat in the house and I'm starving - I've got to sign off for now.
More news soon.
Hugs to everyone :)
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