by way of explanation/about me

[image via a-ve-nue]

I spent the day reading blogs. Also reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz) and hanging out with my family members who were loosely watching NCIS. Additionally, I took a nap that came with a creepy dream about being stuck on a plane that was more like a big white room with tables and was doomed to explode eventually. I'll spare you the details.

Reading the blogs, though, got me thinking. There are a lot of blogs out there with very clear goals and writing. It made me remember the days I tried to do that also, as opposed to having somewhat vague posts that I never have enough time to fully think out and articulate properly. I recently decided that I want to update more often because I've found that writing things out helps me organize myself and my thoughts, to some extent. Equally importantly, it helps me remember the things that are happening to me at a much more rapid pace than I believe I could otherwise remember. 

But I also realized I don't have much of a unifying theme for my blog. Both my life and interests are rather scattered and without much of a unifying theme. At one point, I blogged a lot of projects (knitting, sewing) that I was working on. Or I wrote about cool things that I found. Fashion a little bit. But I think within the past year or two, I've moved away from really having much interest in stuff (as in, things acquired by shopping). I don't know how it happened, but I would theorize that it came during one of my attempts to clean my room or closet and being completely overwhelmed by how many things I had (to organize). 

Somewhere along the way, I started caring more about building significant relationships (all relative, probably). I decided to dedicate my very limited budget to traveling as much as I could, new experiences, new food, and the like. The past year, I've been very lucky to work some rewarding part-time jobs as a children's birthday party planner, knitting instructor for kids in Chicago after school programs, nanny, and babysitter. It enabled me to save some money for tuition, but also to explore my favorite city, Chicago, and all it had to offer, as well as travel to Miami (twice), New Orleans, Boston, and Peru. These experiences changed my life and I wish I had blogged them better. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I am still working on having a clear purpose for this blog, but until then, I'm going to simply blog about my life. And perhaps to figure out what that entails, I should enumerate a little about myself and what is in store for the upcoming months. I'm a 22-year-old medical student with another semester left in my first year of school. It was a long process getting here and continues to be a journey to keep up with everything (and often involves a long night-before-the-exam catchup sessions), but I get by with coffee/tea and my friends. 

I've fallen in love with seeing things I haven't before and exploring new places, particularly cities, but at heart, I'm a Chicago girl. I know (almost) every coffeeshop in the city and there are a few places that know way too much about me. Usually they see me at my worst level of hygiene and wearing the strangest (read: comfiest) outfits, but still attempt to maintain some semblance of acknowledgment that I'm a human being who doesn't get to sleep a lot and I appreciate that to no end. I just came home from a week in beautiful Miami and am beginning preparations for a month in Poland this summer to learn more about clinical medicine in a different culture by working with doctors from Poland. I hope to begin to learn everything I can about this country, which I honestly had never even really considered going to before. 

I hope to share some of my travels, photographs, and projects along the way and I guess that's the best I can do for now!