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LOVE/GUEST POST FOR “DATING WEDNESDAYS” at STARBUCKS BREAK!
CLICK HERE! CLICK HERE! CLICK HERE!
SandyB’s not here. (she’s having a Starbucks with Cheryl!)
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Tag Archives: guest post
Guest post by Not That Kind of Girl! Quite possibly the BEST stuff I’ll have on my blog all week. Seriously. My shit’s been lacking lately, I get it. Now stop judging me and just read this stupendous post already.
I am utterly in a tizzy to have this bloggess extraordinaire all the way here from Not That Kind of Girl today!
I don’t have many morning rituals, except for making Lists, drinking copious amounts of coffee and reading blogs, all within the first 10 minutes of arriving at work. That said…
My mornings are as follows:
1. Arrive at work. Five minutes late, on a good day.
2. Frantically place my Starbucks (a Grande Americano) on my desk. Spill a bit. Freak out. Clean it up with a magazine (there are two-dozen strewn across my desk at any given time). Say, “fuck, fuck, fuck…” and then apologize profusely to my co-worker sitting in the cube next door for my filthy mouth. “No problem, love” she says. She’s used to it- she gets me.
3. Turn on the computer. Yawn.
4. Check emails, voice mails, BlackBerry messages and swig my lukewarm Americano.
5. Scroll my reader for my favorite blogs, especially searching for the musings of this gal, who whips out an incredibly stylish post 5x a week. This is one hard working blogger! In fact, TKOG is always in the top-3 blogs I read within the first few minutes of my day (true story). Hell, even my sister lurks her blog and has commented on it in recent weeks. For the record, my sister has yet to comment on my effing blog. But I digress. She’s just that kind of girl who is totally easy to have a crush on.
Let’s get to the good stuff, shall we?
***
Hey kids! It’s TKOG over from Not That Kind of Girl – here to guest post for sandyb who is, entre nous, one of my favorite bloggers on the whole dang internet. Sandy asked me to blog a list of things I’d like to accomplish before my next significant birthday, and while I was prepared to glibly spew a list of goofy accomplishments (learn to play the piano with my feet; punch a[nother] dude in the face, travel to Tuvalu, etc.), my dumb heart got in the way. You see, one of the things I most admire about sandyb’s blog is that she’s never afraid to get really raw – spill out her emotions and be totally, heart-wrenchingly genuine. It’s something I love about her not the least of all because I find it so hard to do myself.
So, with no further ado, here’s my true, honest, ask-me-about-it-and-I’ll-mock-you-fiercely list of ten things I hope to accomplish in the year and a half before I turn 25. (That said, I apologize for the tedious proliferation of writing-related goals. That’s the thing about dreams: they’re single-minded. They kind of have to be!)
Publish a story in Ploughshares or similarly prestigious literary journal. My biggest current project – the blog – is a work of non-fiction, but left to my own devices, I’m more of a fiction writer. Better sex scenes that way!
Write and publish my first book. For bonus points, afterwards, pitch and start writing my second book, which – if it turns out anything like I dream — will totally get me kicked out of a few bars (or people’s friggin’ lives).
Find a MFA program for creative writing that is a good fit for my goals and temperament, then start the frig out of it. Worst-case scenario: in two years I’m living in Iowa City. Best-case scenario: in two years I’m living in Iowa City.
Tell Matt Lauer face to face that I’ve had a crush on him since I was ten years old. Hopefully this will occur while doing a publicity tour for goal #2. But hey, if I just happen to meet him in a yogurt store – look, I won’t be complainin’.
Plan a kickass bachelorette party for a girl I love like a sister (and yes, my own much-beloved sister is a candidate for this). I’m thinkin’ burlesque photo shoot and then mud baths. Champagne may be thematized.
Whisk myself (and a companion!) away on a totally spontaneous weekend trip. I mean no-bags-packed impromptu. Preferably with someone I’ve met while not-packing bags. Doubly preferably a Count or Lord.
Engage in a grand, sweeping gesture of public nudity. Nothing more pressing to this one than the fact that I love to be, in the idiom of Ratbert, “naked, clueless and feeling goooood.” Plus, uh, feminist body-confidence stuff?
Plan and execute the perfect practical joke. I love jokes and can be an elaborate planner, but my inability to keep a secret has always crippled this life-long dream. I can’t even play “oooh, got your nose!” without giving up the dang jig.
Meet the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. Guess I have to work extra-hard on the other nine goals, kittens, because this one is almost entirely out of my hands. Unless dude is Matt Lauer, in which case, dude, I’m in.
Brush up on my Russian. It bums me out that I once was, if not fluent, then fluish. After all, the one marginal benefit to my utterly useless degree is being able to occasionally impress dudes with my linguistic skill, so why not resurrect four years of work from the drain?!
Dang, guys. Dang. It’s kind of horrifyingly scary to put your honest goals out there. I see what sandyb is up to with this goal listing – it’s emotional heavy-lifting. Though I vow to you, loves, never to be so serious again, I thoroughly recommend you at least once engage in a little list-making of your own. Why not add a few of your almost-too-serious-to-ever-speak goals to the comment section?
I’m taking a Starbucks break.
So apparently I have good ideas. Sometimes.
The other day I wrote a post about how other bloggers have started to BELIEVE ME when I say that creating a “Before I Turn… List” actually works. Kind of like the way when you write a grocery list and the food you need/want sort of ends up in your cart and somehow appears in your kitchen and then in your mouth, feeding you and nourishing your brain. Kind of like that. Only a Birthday List is 10x more awesome, because it can score you things that are equally as fulfilling as food, but better, like success or accolade or a tattoo or a vespa or peace of mind or money or a dream job, or all of that. It all starts with a List, just like your favorite dish. That’s not a coincidence.
So, without further hold up, stop what you’re doing at work because THIS will be the best post you read all day. It’s by the lovely and humorous Cheryl, creator and purveyor of Confessions of a Twenty-Something Year Old, which has amassed a well-deserved following for her poignant to-the-point posts about shit that’s relevant to 20somethings and that 30ishes wished they thought of 10 years ago. Seriously. She’s a gal with sass and she takes her Venti straight up, like a real woman.
Take it away, Cheryl.
You know how sometimes you read a motivational blog, and on the sidebar, the blogger has written a whole list of things he/she wants to accomplish before a certain age?
Yeah, okay. I vowed to never come up with one of those lists- mostly because the people who write those lists actually attempt to do the things they’ve written, but not me. I’m lazy, which means I allow life to roll its own course, and should one of these things happen to me, then great; but if not, I’m not particularly bummed. My cousin, Jacqueline, once said something about how if you have no expectations in life, you can have no disappointments, and as morbid as that may be, I am pretty much stoked everyday of my life, which means that her theory has to be at least partially true. But anyway, the other day, I opened my inbox to find a really long e-mail from Sandyb asking me to guestblog a “things I want to do before …” list for her. Of course, my first thought was “ah, crap” because making this list would mean that I would have to do some serious soul-searching. But whatever. Sandyb is awesome, so I’d do it for her. So here I am, and after 72 hours of obsessing over all the crap I haven’t done in my life, I’ve come up with the following.
The Top 20 things I’d like to do before 30- because 30 things would require too much thought:
1. Write for a magazine.
2. Study graphic design.
3. Live in Australia.
4. Become featured blogger.
5. Get through one morning without having to look for my keys.
6. Get through one day without using my cellphone or some sort of chat device.
7. Learn to speak Spanish perfectly.
8. Learn to play the guitar.
9. Finish writing a song.
10. Write and publish a novel.
11. Make a difference in someone’s life.
12. Own a dog
13. Completely stop saying “like” and “um” in every conversation, unless necessary.
14. Be less critical.
15. Find out whether it’s actually possible to be friends with an ex.
16. Be cliche, and do something supposedly incredibly romantic like visit Paris with my boyfriend.
17. Get married.
18. Change my look- because it’s been the same for 7 years. Seriously.
19. Drink less coffee, because at this rate I’m going to die before 30.
20. Watch the Leafs win the Stanley Cup.
***
UPDATE: Wow! I should use invite Cheryl more often. Seriously though, the responses here are great (keep ‘em coming!) and my inbox has equally awesome messages about this. BUT, I need to clear something up: Your “Birthday List” starts and ends on YOUR BIRTHDAY, not necessarily at 30, which is a long ways away for a lot of you (so jealous, by the way).
If your birthday has passed or is seven months off or whatever, don’t sweat it. You can STILL MAKE A LIST OF THINGS TO ACCOMPLISH BEFORE YOUR NEXT BIRTHDAY (why am I yelling?). Most folks are bummed about turning another year older- a Birthday List, however, helps change that, because it’s the day on which, if you complete your List, you’ve accomplished so much. See what I did there? I reverse-psychologied aging. And yes, that does make me a mild genius in some circles (albeit some very small circles, but they’re circles, nonetheless).
Again, would love to host your List over here, but if you decide to just post on your own blog, totally cool, just link it back to here. Spread the love and give this little project some legs!
xo
sb
I'm Not That Kind of Girl.
Hello? Hello?
Ok, so after weeks of dropping comments on one another’s blogs, Not That Kind of Girl decided to take our blogaffair to the next level. …She emailed me.
I am one flattered chick to be posting there today because she is a fabulously talented, witty, and daring writer. She’s on a mission to complete 250 crazy, awesome things in just one year and tell-all every day. (And sometimes, things even get a little freaky.. oh la la). There isn’t one post of hers I haven’t absolutely adored, and I mean that, straight up.
If you don’t already read this lovely lady, well, I really don’t know what you do with your time. Go!
p.s. for the weirdos who read my blog (um, you know who you are..) the words “Poutine” “Beefcake” and “Cock” are the stars of my guest post today. Just saying.