2014 so far

2014 has been a weird year for me. It's largely because I'm still in Frankfurt and don't want to be, and am trying to get to Nuremberg but can't be there yet because I haven't gotten a job there yet and my visa depends on me having a job. (The not-at-all joys of being a foreigner.) Stephen has been in Nuremberg since October, and I've been to Nuremberg probably a dozen times since then, visiting -- I'm there most weekends -- but still don't live there, and that is all kinds of frustrating. I haven't been writing here because I find this space to be most compelling when I feel like I have some kind of news: I went on a trip to a new city, or to the same excellent city I've been to many times! I took some really wonderful photos that I want to share! Spring has sprung!

I guess it's not entirely accurate that there is full-on nothing going on. Spring is making a serious effort to spring, for one, with sunny days (!) and temperatures around 16 C and up. And for two, much as it feels as though I have been nowhere except for Nuremberg since Christmas, that's not 100% true: I did go to see Mandie in Cologne for Karneval this year. Which I realize is still nothing like the amount of travel I've had under my belt in past years by this time of year, and is certainly contributing to my feelings of being in limbo. But good things are coming. I've made a bunch of excellent vacation plans, among them:

+ Long weekend in Paris with Stephen at the beginning of April, along the lines of last year's crêpextravaganza

+ Girls' weekend with Lucy and Megan at the end of May/beginning of June, location TBD, but overall trip awesomeness level something along the lines of Stockholm or Berlin

+ Long weekend in Denmark in mid-June with Stephen and friends to see Arcade Fire at NorthSide and to give Copenhagen another chance (it was a little unfair of me to expect to be charmed by cold, blustery springtime Copenhagen less than a week off lounging on a Valencian beach)

+ Ten-day trip through the South of France in August with Amanda, who'll have just passed her bar exam and be quite deserving of a lazy vacation on the Côte d'Azur with possible jaunts over into Italy (Cinque Terra? finally, hopefully?? we're flying into Nice and that's not that far at all and I have wanted to see Cinque Terra for years!)

+ Lucy's bachelorette party in a top-secret location in September, followed (naturally!) by...

+ Lucy and Mark's wedding in London in October, which Stephen and I are planning on doing as a long-weekend trip (I really do love London)

Stephen and I had talked about going to Iceland to (hopefully) see the Northern Lights and (definitely) go swimming in all of the hot springs, but that didn't pan out (turns out it had been so long since I'd moved anywhere that I had forgotten that all of your money goes to the bottomless pit that is New Apartment Costs -- true even though I have not actually moved to said New Apartment yet!). Hopefully next year. We're still wanting to go to Greece this summer, which is pretty much the only trip out of the ones that I definitely want to take this year that I haven't already booked. In spite of the fact that I have no guarantee that I will be at the same employer I am currently with by the time I take any of the trips listed above (in fact, I really HOPE I am not -- not because my current employer is not excellent, but because it would be so nice to finally be able to actually go on and move when I've known for months and months that I was going to move eventually), I still feel like it's the best policy to go on and book. You know? One of my old NYC roommates used to talk about how it was vital to have something to look forward to, and that's how I feel about travel: once it's booked, it's happening, and I can start looking forward to it. Until then, it's just an idea, and paying for washing machines and curtains and all of the IKEA runs in the world can get in the way.

I always feel better about living in Europe when I write about traveling and remember all of the wonderful places I still get to see while I live here. The jury is definitely still out about Nuremberg (you know, that place I'm trying to move to), but so far I've only seen it in winter and the barest bits of sunny fall/spring weather, so I'll hold off on passing judgment for the moment.

Other than that...I had a 2014 resolutions post open for months, and really had nothing to say in it, because I feel like what I want for this year is so obvious to me that I did not really need a reminder of it. I want to get a job that will allow me to move to Nuremberg and see Stephen all the time instead of just weekends and on the phone. I want to keep running regularly, because even a couple of miles a couple of times a week works wonders for my mood, and I want to keep walking to work as long as the weather is good (please stay good, weather), because it turns out that with a tiny adjustment to the route I can walk to work in approximately the same amount of time it takes via public transportation and this way my commute goes through a park. (I used to be a bicycle commuter, but I have not replaced my broken bike in spite of the fact that it has been broken for many months; see above re: "feeling of being in limbo"). I want to build my love of calligraphy and invitation design and all things stationery into a business. I want to budget properly, once and for all. It's all very much a work in progress at the moment.

2013 resolutions: check-in

  
[photos from that time I went to Positano with Ann last year]
I made some resolutions at the beginning of 2013, and just like last year, I figured it was about time to take a look at where I stand on my goals and how this year is going.

1. Run a marathon.
Happening! I signed up for the Frankfurt Marathon on Sunday, October 27th and I've been training for it since late June, using a barely modified version of the Hal Higdon Novice 1 training program. Training is time-consuming, unsurprisingly, but it is also inspiring to see how much progress I've made since I ran my first 10K last September. Yesterday's totally normal and un-intimidating seven-mile training run was longer than the longest I had ever run in my life just nine months ago. This is helpful to remember when I'm staring down that week in mid-October where I'll be running two file-milers, a ten-miler, and a twenty-mile monster within five days of each other. Takeaway: our idea of "normal" is not static; it changes and adapts with us. Which is really, really cool.

2. Learn calligraphy.
In February I bought myself the I Still Love Calligraphy online class by Melissa Esplin and the supplies for it and finally gave learning calligraphy a try after having wanted to learn for ages. Turns out there's a good reason they call it a calligraphy practice. I wouldn't say that I've already learned calligraphy at this point, but I am a heck of a lot better at it than I was before I started. We can go ahead and count that as a win.

3. Complete the first draft of a novel.
I like Nicole Antoinette's writing about the power of obsession and how there's just no way to be equally committed to a bunch of different projects at once. As the fact that I've had this goal on my resolutions list for the past two years and have made basically zero progress on it proves, clearly this isn't a priority for me at the moment. And that's okay! It doesn't mean I'll never be a novelist, but it's pretty relieving to be able to let go of the idea of being one right now, at the same time that I am already way committed to making my other big goals happen.

4. Move.
Happening! Stephen's starting a new job this fall and I'm on the hunt for a new one of my own, and hopefully by the end of the year we will both be in Nuremberg. Maybe even living in an apartment that isn't a single room? And in the not-so-far-off future getting a dog? High hopes around here!

As for the list of other things I wanted to do this year:

* go on another Weinwanderung -- done! * continue the hunt for the world's most magnificent beaches -- Sardinia trip in July = done! * be more conscious of my spending -- hahaha. this is a work in progress. * prioritize swimming for exercise -- if by "swimming" I meant "running", then sure! * add speedwork and strength training into my running routine -- I've gotten after this recently, with inconsistent results, but certainly more of each than I was doing in the past * go on a wine weekend in the Pfalz -- not yet, but the year ain't over * concentrate on people photography -- haven't exactly prioritized this*

For the rest of 2013 I'm concentrating on:

+ finding a new job & moving to Nuremberg (resolution #4)
+ running the Frankfurt Marathon (resolution #1)
+ taking slow, deliberate steps toward turning my excessive dorky love for all things calligraphy/stationery into a business (extension of resolution #2)

I'll let you know how all that works out for me!

2013 resolutions

I started out this post with a list of 18 things that I wanted to absolutely definitely do in 2013, which is . . . kind of a lot. Let's try again, with four.

1. Run a marathon.
In high school my assistant track coach told me he was convinced I was going to run a marathon someday, and I basically laughed in his face. And now I've got two half marathons on the schedule for 2013 already (Gran Canaria on January 20th and Frankfurt on March 10th) and have figured I may as well accept my fate. Pretty much the only questions I've got are: when and where? I'm thinking fall, but the location is TBD.

2. Learn calligraphy.
I did not quite get my act together enough to buy myself the supplies and coursework for the I Still Love Calligraphy class by Melissa Esplin, which was my original plan for Big Thing I Want for Christmas 2012. I've been obsessed with stationery and hand lettering for ages, and am excited to get into developing my own calligraphy practice.

3. Complete the first draft of a novel.
This was a goal last year, too, and I didn't precisely set myself up for success by putting it off until NaNoWriMo in Novemeber -- when I was also already training for a half marathon five times a week. I like the NaNoWriMo concept, and am going to be picking a different month to give it another go this year.

4. Move.
I'll consider this resolution satisfied if I'm living in a different apartment this time next year, but really the goal is not to move for the sake of moving so much as it is to be moving forward. I've been in the same apartment for not quite three years, and in addition to being physically stationary I'm feeling stagnant.

From the original list of 18, some other stuff I would just plain like to do this year:

* go on another Weinwanderung * continue the hunt for the world's most magnificent beaches * be more conscious of my spending * prioritize swimming for exercise * add speedwork and strength training into my running routine * go on a wine weekend in the Pfalz * concentrate on people photography

Current travel plans on the agenda:

+ Gran Canaria with Stephen - January 19-23
+ ski trip to the Innsbruck, Austria area with friends - late February
+ Kelley visitation to Frankfurt or elsewhere - late March
+ Mom visitation to Frankfurt or elsewhere - spring, maybe?
+ Conor's college graduation in Vermont & some time in Stone Harbor - late May/early June

resolutions: check-in

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[a few outtakes from Stephen's and my trip to Sardinia]

In January, I wrote about my resolutions for 2012. I've been thinking about them a lot lately, since -- as much as I'd like for summer to last forever -- it's mid-September now, which means that winter is coming, which means that the year is almost over (what?!). So, a little check-in:

+ Figure out job/country/life situation. -- Ha.

+ Write daily. -- Not so much.

+ Run a 10K. -- Happening! I signed up for the Energizer Night Run in Cologne about a month ago, and Mandie and I are running the 10K version.

+ Write the first draft of a novel (= at least 50,000 words). -- In progress, kinda sorta. (There's still NaNoWriMo!)

+ Take a cooking class. -- Not yet, but there's a cooking school in Frankfurt that offers vegetarian group classes in English -- important if I want to involve Stephen the vegetarian whose German, while marvelous (Ich muss machen Sie pee-pee.), is not yet quite up to speed for a cooking class.

+ Take a photography class. -- Three-hour photography walk = done, with David Hagerman.

+ Be open to randomness. -- To the extent that I tend to equate "randomness" with "excellent and relatively spontaneous travel", so far so good: Malaysia with Megan. Freiburg with Mandie, as well as more than one trip to Cologne. Berlin, repeatedly, with Conor. London with Lucy. Munich, Valencia, Copenhagen, Sardinia with Stephen. Rome + the Amalfi Coast + Capri with Ann is coming up in under a month (!) -- although, given that this trip has been on my calendar for two years, I don't guess I can really categorize it as spontaneous. (It will, however, surely be excellent.)

I guess my main take-away here is: I travel kind of often, and with some good, good people. And even though I still consider myself a photography beginner, I feel as though I've had some fabulous opportunities to take pictures in very cool places, and a decent amount of the time I am actually taking the pictures I want to be taking. And improving as I go! As for the rest of my resolutions/goals, I'm going to go ahead and consider the list more of a push to move in the right direction than something that I need to hold myself to extremely rigidly.

Having said that . . . November looks like a mighty fine month for banging out 50,000 words of a crappy first draft of a novel.

resolutions and plans

[Full photo set here. Is it really possible that between last August and now I had forgotten how incredible the Côte d'Azur is? Guess so.]

Some resolutions for 2012:

+ Figure out job/country/life situation.

+ Write daily.

+ Run a 10K.

+ Write the first draft of a novel (= at least 50,000 words). It's all right for it to be terrible! That is what first drafts are for.

+ Take a cooking class.

+ Take a photography class.

+ Be open to randomness, such as the solo four-day trip to the South of France I planned at the last minute last year upon having a fit of feeling that I wasn't getting out of Frankfurt enough. (. . . This was approximately thirty seconds after returning from three weeks in the USA, mind.)


Last year at approximately this time: I was getting ready to go to London.

Three weeks from today: I will be on a plane to visit my brother Conor in China for a week, followed by a week in Malaysia with Megan. I think that's what we call starting 2012 off right.