Saucy

this is what happens when you search "sauce" on pinterest

There’s an expression in Polish that my mother likes to use when describing feeling out of sorts: “nie w sosie.” Translated literally, this means “not in the sauce.”

Guys. I am not in the sauce.

All of January has been this way. Gray, and cold, and bland. Sauce-less. This week has been particularly bad, and today, after wasting countless hours on Pinterest trying to find quotes emo enough to tweet, and on Spotify wishing that some lyricist would provide me with insight into my own ravaged soul, I finally decided: enough is enough.

So I laced up my boots and I went for a walk. And I decided to walk until I felt okay again.

This is the story of what happened on that walk.

Or rather, it is the story of what happened in my head on that walk.

There were two quotes running through my head as my boots pounded the pavement: one from The Perks of Being a Wallflower (“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be”), and the other from Garden State (“That's life. If nothing else, It's life. It's real, and sometimes it fuckin' hurts, but it's sort of all we have”). First of all, yes, I do in fact realize that those are both indie/hipster favorites and maybe that makes me a little bit overly Brooklyn. Second of all, how those writers were able to harness the insecurities, emotions and that terrible uncertainty that constitute being young and to word everything so concisely and perfectly is beyond me.

Clearly, being concise is not one of my strong suits.

Being young, being a twenty-something, learning how to figure things out...it’s hard. It’s really fucking hard. I don’t want to whine and complain because a) that will make me more of an annoyingly privileged hipster than you already think I am, and b) what’s the point?

Ah, but I think that last part is the whole problem, to begin with.

What’s the point of applying for other jobs, if I already have one? What’s the point of getting another job just to see if that will be more fulfilling and make me happier, if there’s no guarantee? What’s the point of going to grad school, if I’m not even entirely sure that it would be to study what I’m actually interested in? What’s the point of spending time to figure out what it is I’m interested in enough to study it, since it will probably change again in six months?  What’s the point of doing anything, really, since everything is probably going to change again in six months?

What’s the point of opening up to someone and hoping that he likes you back enough to keep being with you despite his own questions, when chances are you’ll just get really confused and more than a little bit sad? What’s the point of hoping and imagining and expecting when really nothing ever happens the way you want it to happen in your head? What’s the point of liking someone so much that it makes you question all of the other choices you’re making, when those choices are already so convoluted in the first place because YOU’RE TWENTY FUCKING THREE YEARS OLD AND NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK HE’S DOING?!!?!

Et cetera. As you can probably tell, this was a pretty long walk.

Apparently, getting our hopes up is one of the bravest things we can do. Apparently, the “point” of all of this--and by this, I mean life--is just that: figuring it out. Life means figuring things out. Some people are just a little more sure of themselves than others, but in the end, we’re all on the road. Moving towards an unknown and unpredictable future. I’m going to continue to be terribly unoriginal and throw another quote at you guys, this one from Finding Nemo (that hipster classic): “Just keep swimming.”

But as I neared home, two hours into my search for clarity, something happened that, if I were a woman who believes in signs from the Universe, would have been Very Significant. A dog without a leash ran up next to me, then slowed and matched my pace. We locked eyes, and a deep understanding passed between us as we kept moving. From behind, his owner called, “Joe! Stay.” And the dog stayed.

I think I need someone to tell me to stay. Or maybe I just need to tell myself. FAUSTYNA. STAY. Stay here, slow down, be in the present. Stop worrying, enjoy where you are, enjoy the moment.

Everything is going to be fine.

reflections and resolutions

pinned from Pink It via Pinterest

I feel as though I should be doing some sort of writing warm-ups right now, in preparation for my first blog post since February of last year. Cranial calisthenics? Brain ballet?

All of this alliteration is already making my head hurt.

A few weeks ago, at dinner with a friend, we got on the subject of what it means to be an adult. Thanks to those two--okay, four--glasses of wine, things got pretty philosophical pretty quickly. Is "adulthood" a level that is achieved (as if this is a game!) when financial independence is won? Is it a state of mind that you never need to adopt, if you don't want to? Is it simply becoming less naive about the ways the world works? Shouldering more responsibilities and being held accountable for your actions and emotions?

Whatever it means, the path to adulthood is one that is full of ups and downs. Full of thoughts and realizations. Lots of questions, very few answers. Turns out everyone is kind of flying by the seat of his or her pants.

In 2012, I definitely flew by the seat of my pants. It was a year full of ups and downs, of thoughts and realizations, of questions and not so many answers.

2012 started in Amsterdam, surrounded by fireworks and revelers. January and February were gray, and snowy, but filled with long hours at cafes with friends and lots of naps on my little sofa bed in middle-of-nowhere France. In March, I started making plans for my post-France career. Grad school? Jobs? All options were on the table. I thought I had figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

Perhaps I still am incredibly naive. To have things figured out at 23? Unheard of.

Anyway. April and May were full of travels--to Rome, to the Amalfi Coast, to Reims, to Paris. And back home again, just in time for a childhood friend's wedding. Friends got engaged, married, got pregnant and had babies. Friends also passed away--2012 saw four people who had incredibly positive impacts on my life go. It's not going to be the same without them.

The summer was spent in Ohio, dreaming up big ideas and never really following through on any of them. I cooked a lot, read a bit, and rediscovered my love for Akron in the summertime. In August, I moved back to New York. All of those carefully laid plans, created back in March, were shelved. Those carefully laid plans, that I was so sure of, suddenly became uncertain. Instead of making waves in the entertainment and marketing industries (more on those "failures" some other time), I was put in charge of coordinating special events and spearheading publicity for one of NYC's most highly anticipated restaurants.

The last few months of 2012 were perhaps the most emotionally tumultuous. Fears and insecurities about love and friendships and jobs were almost constant. Back in high school, I used to think that fears and insecurities would just magically disappear the day I turned 20. Early twenties meant confidence and assuredness.

I was wrong.

Early twenties mean having almost no idea what I'm currently doing, what I will be doing (or with whom!), and somehow having the strength to get out of bed every morning and face the uncertainties anyway. Like I said, flying by the seat of my pants. Somehow, things are still working out. Life has a funny way of doing that, I guess.

So, life in 2013...what will that be like?

I like to think that I do have at least a little bit of control over my life and what happens, so, without further ado, some resolutions, if you will.

I resolve to:
do more of what makes me happy
stick up for myself
take care of myself
be a better friend
become an expert on something
have more late night conversations with inspiring people
travel somewhere, anywhere

I resolve to chill the fuck out.
It's all happening, and it's all going to be fine.

Happy New Year, everyone.

unlocked

There is something about this time of year that inspires nostalgia. It's February: it's cloudy more often than not, so a lot of time is spent indoors, reading or clicking through old photos on Facebook. February means Valentine's Day. It's the time that people (soon to be college grads, for example, or, well, people like me) start looking for the Next Big Opportunity. This, in turn, inspires a lot of personal reflection. How did I get here? What made me the way I am? etc.

I promise this isn't going to be your typical emo/existential blogpost. Despite the two glasses of wine that I have already downed. And despite the Fleet Foxes genius mix and tea lights that are currently happening chez moi. No. This is not Xanga.

So. I've been doing a lot of reminiscing lately. A lot of reminiscing, and a lot of reflecting. A lot of daydreaming. Working in schools with hundreds of hormonal, overemotional teenagers isn't helping. In my attempt to understand what sorts of things they would like to learn about, what sorts of activities they would find fun, if anything, I've had to put myself in their shoes.

That being said, there are a lot of directions in which I could now take this post, but what I really want to talk about are lockers. Yes. You read that correctly. Lockers.

The French don't have lockers. Perhaps this is meant to reduce the type of kissing that the French are so well known for from going down. (If that was the goal, I can tell you it has failed spectacularly. Those kids have no qualms about shoving their tongues down each other's throats and will do it anywhere and everywhere. Pretty sure they get more action in one five-minute break between classes than I have in the past three years. Combined.) Perhaps the no-locker phenomenon was also to prevent vandalism and graffiti. (This has also failed. You'd think by now someone would have figured out that "fuck" is not spelled "fuk," but I guess that's not what the English language assistant is there for, right?)

By now you're probably thinking, what's she on about? What the fuk is so special about lockers? They're kind of ugly. Nerds get shoved in them. It's a pain learning (and remembering) a new combination every year. They can get really messy, and often really smelly. They can cause traffic jams. And how often did you walk down the halls of your high school and have a locker door fly open into your face?

But remember how exciting it was to have birthdays in middle and high school, because you knew that your best friends would, every year, without fail, decorate your locker? Remember how, before a big game, athletes would have their lockers inundated with good luck wishes and green and gold streamers? Remember decorating your locker with photos of friends, posters of Orlando Bloom, and those silly magnetic dry-erase boards? Remember how people would slip notes on lined 5-star paper into your locker, probably folded up like little triangles? Remember how, when you had a crush on someone, you would plan out your route to class and make a detour just to pass by his locker, on the off-chance that he'd be there and you two could exchange a shy smile? Remember how he'd come to your locker after school and try to lean casually while talking to you, but fail miserably because, well, it's entirely impossible to act casual when your entire being is focused on making this other person like you back?

Remember?

I think the French are missing out. There's something to be said for the anticipation, drama, and excitement--the butterflies--of lockers and everything that happens near them. Lockers are, I think, one of those strange identity-forming social rituals/experiences. Strange, yes, but also beautiful.

Remember?

woah dream big

During my freshman year of high school, now nearly eight years ago (!!!), my good friend Epiphany and I began writing in our so-called Notebooks (creative, I know), which, by the end of our high school career, numbered well over twenty. Those Notebooks were, come to think of it, basically our lifeline throughout those typically tumultuous high school years. Instead of releasing our teenage angst in more physical or visible ways, we turned to our pen and paper. The pages of those Notebooks are filled with scribbles and doodles and long, long letters. They are some of the most hilarious and also heartbreaking pieces of writing you'll ever see.

The last time I was home, in late September, I drove out to see Epiphany. When I got to her new place, I saw that she had lugged out the storage box in which she'd kept all of our Notebooks. For a few minutes, we were silent, just reading over what we had written and reminiscing. Then we began reading aloud certain passages to each other, and pretty soon we couldn't stop laughing.

I was struck by a few things. We wrote about the same things over and over (and over). From year to year, the themes of our Notebooks stayed the same: boys we loved (and who, most often, did not return our ardor), girls we didn't like, and how much we hated our *insert body part here*. It's so funny to read things like this, now, after having seen a bit more of the world that's out there, and to realize how narrow the mindset of a high-schooler really is.

Yet I was also struck by the prevailing sense of optimism and positivity that runs through those Notebooks. Sure, we despaired over the size of our kneecaps and agonized for weeks about who would ask us to Homecoming. But because we were sharing our writings--our thoughts, our fears--with each other, we were able to support each other. Each complaint from one side was swiftly negated by the other: "SHUT UP you're beautiful and you KNOW IT," etc, etc.

We shared our thoughts and our fears, yes, and we also shared our dreams. We dreamed of bigger and better things, the two of us. At one point, we were going to be successful violinists-turned-magazine editors-turned-superstars, taking New York (and, by proxy, the rest of the world) by storm. Okay, so maybe things haven't turned out quite like we'd dreamed. But that doesn't mean that we have to give up on those castles in the sky, right? We just have to adjust them a little bit to match the reality at hand, right?

A lot of people say they do their best thinking in the shower. I do my most random thinking in the shower. Today, I was thinking about what my answers will be when journalists from Vanity Fair come to administer the Proust Questionnaire. In case you live under a rock, VF's PQ subjects are, essentially, living legends. In the back of my mind, an annoying little voice was whispering, "Faustyna. Get outta here. You're not going to make it big! It's too late...especially since you're still so lost." Well, you know what, Annoying Little Voice? I don't think it's ever too late to dream big. Maybe that's naive...maybe so. But I'd rather hold on to some fragment of a dream than resign myself to a static, complacent lifestyle.

Call me crazy, but I still have a dream.

cinema, solo

d4nceinthedark.tumblr.com via weheartit

I've said it before: sometimes, I like being alone. More so than most people, I think. When I lived in New York City, I was known to take myself out to dinner at least once a week. Just me, a glass of wine, and that week's issue of The New Yorker. When you're constantly surrounded by people, often not by choice, it's really nice to just be with yourself. And who said that you have to do that in the privacy of your own home? Why not show people that you like yourself enough to hang out with yourself in public? Easier said than done, of course, but it can really be one of life's little pleasures.

Going to the movies solo was the next hurdle for me to get over. The trick, I've found, is to go during the off-times; that is, the times when not that many people are going to the theater. Sure, you're going to feel awkward being alone at the Friday night showing of the latest romantic comedy. Chances are you'd be the only one not participating in the classic dinner-and-a-movie combo with your Crush of the Week. So instead, why not go see it on Saturday at 2PM? Problem solved!

That's just what I did this past weekend, and it turns out the Saturday 2PM rom-com is the Single Girls' Showing. It was me and four other middle-aged women--all of us solo, all of us ready to learn "l'Art d'Aimer." It was nice. Sure, I didn't have anyone to exchange horrified looks with at some of the trailers for upcoming movies, but I didn't have to make unimportant small talk with anyone while waiting for the movie to start, either.

And, of course, once the movie starts, everyone, ideally, is alone. That's what I like about going to the movies. In the dark, once the story envelops its listeners, everyone enters into his or her own subjective little world. Everyone gets something different out of every single movie. The movie experience is shaped by your own personal worldview. It's often quite nice, after a movie, to discuss what you thought with others. But often, putting what you felt into words is nearly impossible. And most of the time, no one is going to feel exactly the same way you felt. Perhaps going to the movies is supposed to be enjoyed solo...?

Unfortunately, holding hands with myself is not quite as fun.

gratitude

heartbeatyoo on tumblr via weheartit

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for.....

• my mama and my papa
• my beautiful friends
• Skype
• Spotify
• good music in general
• good wine
• ...and my ability to finish an entire bottle by myself
• smart, intelligent conversation
• inspiring people who believe in something & stand up for a cause
• funny people (and a sense of humor in general)
  
• the postal service
• yoga podcasts on iTunes
• all of these experiences in France

namely, meeting people from all over the world; being able to share my language and culture with some of the best kids ever; learning about the French language and culture from a really unique standpoint; eating some of the best food I've had in my life; learning about myself and my strengths and limitations;

...I could go on.

• travel discounts for people under 25
• travelling all over this beautiful world
• and the opportunity to take time to figure things out
• good books and good writers
• cute boys. and flirting.
  
• cassoulet and tartelettes au citron
• the fact that so many people I know are doing great things
• et cetera
  

I'm pretty damn lucky.

quelle heure est-il?

thelifeisforthosewhodream.tumblr.com

The concept, the idea of time is one that has been written about many, many times. It's been mulled over by poets such as T.S. Eliot in his wonderful Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...

It has been immortalized in songs, such as Fly Like An Eagle, by Steve Miller Band:

Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin'
Into the future...

I guess that since time is quite an abstract concept, it would make sense that each country and each culture has a different idea of what it means. Perhaps the biggest adjustment to life in France so far has been getting used to its definition.

In some cases, I completely and wholeheartedly support how the French think of time as a precious and personal commodity. For example: school holidays, taking two hours for lunch, etc. Just the other day, some fellow professors of mine were speaking very passionately and rapidly in the staff room. When I asked someone to slow it down for me (ha!) and explain, it turns out that they were absolutely flabbergasted that the students would no longer be able to have their usual twenty minute recess between classes in the afternoon. Normally, the French middle school schedule includes two brief recesses (one in the morning, one in the afternoon), and a longer lunch. Due to an overcrowded cafeteria, lunchtime will now be extended for half an hour...but in doing so, the afternoon recess disappears. I mentioned that in the States, students in middle school typically get a little less than an hour's break in the middle of the day, and that's it. I can't even begin to tell you the looks of horror that I got. "But how do you learn, how do you concentrate?" A very valid point, my friends.

So yes, perhaps the French are on to something good with their concept of time. Perhaps. Because as much as I appreciate luxuriously long lunches, I do not appreciate waiting three weeks for a debit card. Nor do I appreciate the amount of time and paperwork it takes to become a legitimate citizen and worker in this country. Efficient, the system is not. If you want something important to be done, be prepared to wait a while. It's difficult to adjust to, especially coming from New York City, where everyone is always speeding through things and getting everything accomplished quickly. In New York, everyone is always goingoingoing.

I just finished reading Peter Mayle's A Year In Provence, and he, too, experienced the difficulty of dealing with the French and their fluid notion of time. For him, it was a source of frustration that his villa in Provence was in a constant state of disrepair, thanks to the various upgrades that had to be done. "Soon, soon" the workers all promised, but no one would give him specific dates. Mayle decided to distract himself with the warm sun, with good food, and with fabulous wine...

On that note, I'm off to Bordeaux.