Skip to main content

Emotional Rollercoaster

Today I made my last effort to get through to the voter outreach organization I applied for a job with. It didn't work. My inability after a full week to even get in touch with these people marks the end of my efforts to stay in Chicago. It's clear at this point that nothing I came here to do is going to come through, and with that being the case it's not worth it to fight the battles I would have to fight to stay.

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a tinge of melancholy to the way I'm feeling about this right now, but all-in-all I'm okay. This blog has been important to me, and being able to look and see just how many posts I've made in the two weeks I've been out here fills me with pride. I'm happy with what I've done. If I go home now, it's a victory. If I tried to drag it out the rest of the summer for the sake of staying with no real opportunities on the horizon, that victory would sour.

Still, it's not time for a wrap-up post yet! I'm set to stay in Chicago through Pride. The goals have just shifted a little bit for the next week. Instead of pounding the pavement in search of my next opportunity, we've moved to full adventure mode. I've got a few final threads to cut this weekend, a task I'm not looking forward to. I worked hard enough to establish roots when prospects still looked better that I have some things to leave behind here. I have mixed feelings about that. I feel good that I managed to make it happen, but I wish my leaving would have less of an affect on other people.

Once the unpleasant task of uprooting myself is completed, I can move on from surviving to exploring, which means you can look forward to plenty of posts in the next week about the people and places I find in Chicago. It's been an emotional roller coaster getting here. I've felt grief and anger and disappointment every time it started to look like things were going to go south. I've also felt joy and pride and excitement in new and wonderful ways when I managed to coax something else unexpected out of life. If it's going to be my last week here (for now), I plan to make the best of it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Quest Fullfilled

My greatest battle of wills in Chicago, my huge arc of self vs. self conflict, has been avoiding bookstores as much as possible. Bookstores are my Achilles heel; I can't remember a time in my life where I couldn't spend hours and a significant chunk of my bank account in them. These bookstores have been even more alluring because, through all of Pride month, just about every bookstore I've passed has had a Pride display, tables full of books full of gay. Today I finally gave into the temptation and visited Unabridged, a bookstore in Boystown. The Pride displays were beautiful. This lapse in my self-control lead to the fulfillment of the quest I failed last night. I went into the store hoping to find two gay books, one history book and one fiction book. Almost right away I found The Stonewall Reader in the Pride display. This book is exactly what I wanted. It's a gay anthology with three distinct sections: before Stonewall, during Stonewall, and after Stonewall. Pengui
Post a Comment
Read more

Pride Fest

I almost decided not to write about this, and it was the strangest feeling. I love to write. Writing makes me feel more connected to myself and the world. I don't think I've ever had something special and thought, Wow, I really don't want to write about this  before. For some reason, this time, it almost felt wrong. It felt like letting go of something I desperately want to hold onto. I guess the tradeoff of writing like this is that I end up having to share what I'm writing about with the world, or however much of the world wants to listen. I'm not sure if I want to share this. There's a piece of myself that wants it to belong entirely to me. That doesn't feel quite right either, though, so I'm going to follow my usual instinct and write. Hopefully, as writing always seems to, it will bring me answers. On Saturday I attended my first major pride event, Pride Fest, with Chloe and some of her friends, at least some of which are now also my friends. I wa
Post a Comment
Read more

The Bean

While I was downtown, I decided a trip to a certain Chicago landmark was well overdue. The Bean, formally known as Cloud Gate, is a giant silver bean-shaped statue in Millenium Park, done by artist Anish Kapoor. If you follow anything art-related, you might recognize Kapoor as the selfish artist feuding with Stuart Semple because Kapoor got himself exclusive rights to the darkest shade of black ever invented. This feud is also where I know The Bean from, because Ellie sent me Facebook events in the wake of this feud that had to do with painting The Bean Blackest Black, or Semple's counter, Pinkest Pink. The Bean is evident as soon as you get into Millenium Park, and it is kind of mesmerizing. It shows a distorted but somehow very inviting reflection of the city around it. I definitely didn't expect The Bean to speak to me. Near The Bean is this sign with a QR code... And if you use the QR code... The Bean calls you! And The Bean has a lot to say. It introduc
Post a Comment
Read more