Oh Coffee, why have I forsaken thee?

There's nothing like a good cup of coffee.  It's one of my favorite things in life, and yesterday I attempted to give it up due to stress, heart rate, etc.  My attempt lasted all of 90 minutes, then Mike woke up and put on a pot and I just couldn't resist.  It was one of the most wonderful cups of coffee I've ever had.  Oh coffee, I might not ever leave you, and I don't know if I'd ever want to.  Oh coffee, please forgive me.  

I remember trying my mother's coffee when I was little, and thought it was good only when dipping a cookie into it.  A few years passed before I tried it again, and I started drinking it regularly when I was 17 and moving to New York.  My sister used to joke with me about how I would become some beatnik the second I moved to the city, wearing all black, drinking black coffee, being snooty, and talking about Baudrillard and Hobbes and Margaret Mead.   To be perfectly honest, she wasn't very far off.  When I moved to the city, I lived an amazing life, the life I thought I should be living, but it was missing something.

I thought what I was missing was life experience, travel, and romance, but I still fell short.  When I moved out of the city, I thought I was just missing the city.  After spending a lot of time in NYC recently, and even visiting my old stomping ground at NYU, I realized what I was missing the whole time: myself.  I wrote a blog two years ago about the cookies in the Dr. Seuss cookie jar, and how I just tossed it aside and proclaimed it too juvenile.  I think about those cookies often and how I acted, and I always cringe.  I realize now my mother was trying to give me a part of myself, and at the time it was something I was desperate to toss aside.  

All of this clarity did not come all at once.  After all, there is a two year gap in this blog.  I started this blog as a quest to find myself, to return to the person I wasn't sure I knew anymore.  I decided then to concentrate on figuring out my favorite cookie; once you find your cookie, you find yourself and the richness in life.  

The thing is, I knew my favorite cookie all along.  I knew who I was, I was just plain terrified.  It's been a long two years, but really my favorite cookie was the kind in the Dr. Seuss cookie jar, those extra-extra chocolate morsels with a confectioner's sugar coating, the ones I didn't even finish.  It feels so good knowing this about myself, knowing I am only a recipe (and a cup of coffee for dipping) away from who I really am.

I am truly thankful for this clarity, and know I wouldn't have gotten here without Cheri's visit.  I hadn't seen her in three years, and it was wonderful to have her around as a reminder of our NYU days, but also as just a good friend who isn't at all enamored with the culture or excitement of New York.  I'm not going to lie, I still love New York.  I still love people watching, the crazies, and the unexpected.  But life is different and much more difficult there as an adult, and I didn't truly realize it until this week.  I don't just want to live or work in the city just to do so, I want a good quality of life.  It's really good to know this about myself.  I may still drink my coffee and talk about Margaret Mead, but at least now I will do it because I love it, not because I'm trying to be someone I'm not.  

Reflections on the Ivy League and Cookies

I posted this on my myspace blog a couple weeks ago, I figure this is a good place to start:

I have been associated with the ivies for a little more than three weeks now, and here are some scattered observations:
1. Professors in the ivies really do have Austrian accents, and wear cardigans with patches on the elbows.
2. I keep forgetting my audience. Upper crust ivy people just don't laugh as much as us NYU folk.
3. Academia creates celebrities just as much as any other form of art. Only it's worse. I have a problem with art that isn't accessible, and the ivies are the epitome of that. These academic celebrites probably get just as much ass (and just as many people to kiss theirs) as any rock star I've heard of. Not that I know a lot of rock stars, but you get the point.
4. Those annoying kids in your classes in college who sat in front and asked questions not to ask questions but to sound smart, they turn into professors who either attend or hold lectures for colleagues, and they do the same thing. They're the same people, just older and have gotten laid more (see number 3).
5. Even if men are colorblind and still dress themselves, it's accepted in this culture. Women still have to look hot, even when you're really well-respected. Hot women get further in life. I'm not trying to go against my gender, that's just a fact.
6. This doesn't have to do with ivies, but I'm alarmed to admit that I don't think I have a favorite kind of cookie. Holy shit! I'm like that really bad Richard Gere/Julia Roberts movie where she doesn't have a favorite way of preparing eggs. I don't have a favorite cookie and I should really have one. My least favorite is Snickerdoodles because they remind me of cycle class in the 7th grade when I got made fun of for eating too many (I was LARGE). Dammit!
7. If I had gone to an ivy-league as an undergrad (I didn't even apply, I knew it wasn't for me then. And not because I couldn't get in), I would have been really miserable. Except maybe at Barnard, that place seems cool. But NYU was way more hip. I can play the game 6 degrees of Matador, and stop at 2.
8. One of my bosses looks JUST like Peter from the Guess Who game in the 90's (not the new version). Please tell me someone knows who this is.
9. It rocks that I have off the week between Christmas and New Year's, and I'm getting paid for it.
10. There are now a gaggle of medical students that are younger than me. If it were some other world, I would be a 3rd year med student right now. That means that if you were sick in a university hospital, I might have gone to your bed. Me. One of the first-years at Penn hit on me the other day. He looked like he was 19, and was just so damn congenial. I didn't have the heart to be the one to break his spirit and tell him about the real world.
11. There is a reason why I moved out of my parents' house. There are lots of them. One of which is that now I am a feather in my father's cap over at IVY LEAGUE. Before I was dust swept under the rug. Neither felt good, because neither is really me.
12. People sure are nice where I work. Maybe it's the free tuition? "Only the educated are free?"