Over October
Of school days, be it class halloween parties or mid-terms. Carving pumpkins, haunted houses, group study sessions at the library. Homecoming football games, crisp leaves, that rustic cold air smell, and for all you Big Bend Elementary school alums, the “Turkey Trot”.
I turned 24 this month, not a memorable number of age by any stretch. Even so, it’s a milestone, marking a distinct yet elusive spot on the life timeline: limbo.
The convergence of October and the mid-twenties brings me into a not-there-anymore and not-there-yet suspension. I’m not a kid in school who gets to trick-or-treat nor am I a parent indulging the activities of the former.
Lacking a society designated generation costume, I’ll lean on this theory for the moment: You are what you do. In light of this tangible context, here’s what I did in October:
- worked my tail off trying to save some money for Australia
- took photos of fall leaves in Rogers Park
- had two fillings put in my mouth: one for a cavity, the second for a faulty filling
- finished the paper edit of my Abraham Project video
- cleaned out the mountains of crap from the second bedroom in the condo and painted the room yellow
- endured pain in my teeth for a week, commenced breakdown at the possibility of having to drop nearly 5K on root canals and crowns
- set up editing suite in new yellow bedroom
- traveled out to the suburbs with Kirk to go to a pumpkin farm; found the most exciting part to be not the gourds but the giraffes and wallabies in the “exotic” animal tent
- relieved of pain in teeth, relieved of potential financial ruin
- completed first video edit of interview footage for Abraham Project video; total length: 43 minutes (target length? 10 minutes! Ouch.)
- celebrated my birthday by going out with Kirk and playing darts at a Wrigleyville bar, followed by dinner at Geja’s Cafe, a fondue place
- became sick with and cured of a cold/flu (still unsure of what it was) within a 12 hour timespan
- baked a pumpkin pie, despite the cavity
- tracked down my sister on her Urban Sociology class trip to Chicago; jumped on the Green Bay Lamers coach bus to ride along with her for the leg of the tour between UIC to University of Chicago
- trimmed the AP video down to 25 minutes
- pulled the trigger (with Kirk’s cash & my emotional support) and bought the Canon 7D DSLR
- baked 3 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies
- and topping it all off – yet to be completed – a trip to Florida with my mom, visiting my grandparents
October was fairly productive, mildly celebratory, erratically emotional, schemingly adventurous and mostly enjoyable. Onward march through limbo, into November.
