Ani DiFranco has this song called “Soft Shoulder” from her album To The Teeth.  I love that song.  The first verse is perpetually stuck in my head:

I don’t keep much stuff around
I value my portability
but I will say that I have saved
every letter you ever wrote to me

I want to be able to value my portability.  I’ve lived in four different cities and seven different apartments in the last six years, and sometimes I wish that moving was as easy as filling up a backpack and a little satchel and walking to the next destination.  That’s what I imagine Ani doing.

I’m no pack rat, but I do have a few boxes of letters, postcards, ticket stubs, mementos, school work, photos, and Xerox copies of interesting articles.  And books.  I’m not a collector — I think I have less than 150 books — but the books take up the most space each time I move. Read more »

Who and what do you want to be in 2010 (but more importantly, why)?

Today is New Year’s Eve and like many people at this very moment, I’ve been thinking about my resolutions.  I’ve shunned this tradition the past couple years because for some reason – if I clearly stated I was going to do something – the likelihood of it not happening was even higher than if I had not said anything at all.

I enjoyed a pretty successful first year out of college but like many, the recession soon found me and my hopes for steady work and monetary stability were knifed in the face.  This year, I learned that “Freelancer” was just a glorified term for “Intermittently Unemployed.”  Naturally, this leant me quite a bit of time to sit on my couch and stew in my own thoughts.  It took awhile to boil down the carcass of my early twenty-something idealism, but at the end of 2009 I found myself with a rather flavorful confit of hope and aspirations.  Since I wasn’t sure where to start, I asked a handful of friends what their personal resolutions would be.  Most were pretty run-of-the-mill (you know, like “getting in shape” or “getting out of debt”) and I’m not really the biggest fan of run-of-the-mill.  I was also set on making my resolutions concrete and more specific (you know, like “double the income I had in 2009” instead of “earn more money” or “master the Arabic language” instead of “learn new stuff”).  My desire to prevent my resolution from being ill-defined was shot to death (wow, my writing is violent tonight) upon asking my friend Bryan what his resolution was going to be.

“I’m going to be more awesome.” Read more »