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Neurotic As Hell

Choosing Figs Blog

January 26, 2015
in birthday, Chicago Life, my birthday

I'm sometimes called out about how negative I can be. And I get it: my blog can be kind of a downer. But that doesn't mean I'm not happy. And it doesn't mean I don't have a totally amazing life full of good food, friends, and experiences. It's mostly just that I use writing as a way to make sense of things, and usually you don't have to make sense of happy things. Happy things are happy things. Negative things are more complicated. Negative things need to be worked through. Negative things need attention. And, for me, writing is the...

January 2, 2015
in goals, New Year's

After writing my last post, after writing out a list of resolutions for this coming year, I went back and looked at what I wrote last year at this time. And I realized that I wrote the exact same damn thing. Exactly the same. After a year of feeling at a standstill, I made a list of resolutions, hoping to move forward in 2014. Only to look at them now and realize that I went nowhere. And so here I am, again, listing pretty much the same things I did a year ago. In hope that, maybe, I can...

December 30, 2014
in New Year's

Tomorrow is the last day of 2014 and I'm excited for the fresh start a new year brings. It's not that 2014 was a bad year. But I spent most of it feeling off track. Maybe because I knew the return home was inevitable. Maybe because I was traveling to places that weren't necessarily places I dreamed of going. Maybe because I took on things I should never have taken on. I was rarely in the moment. I was rarely emotionally in the place I was physically. I shut down. A lot. It was a sloppy year. I'm hoping 2015 brings...

December 25, 2014
in Christmas

My family celebrated Christmas yesterday. It makes sense, really. We have such a small family and we all live somewhere in Chicago or the suburbs that we see each other often enough. And there are so few of us that it's a little repetitive to do both Christmas end Christmas Eve. And so I will spend Christmas getting coffee at Dunkin Donuts (it was much closer than the nearest open Starbucks), seeing Into the Woods, and then getting Chinese food for dinner. A nice, quiet, peaceful day....

December 22, 2014
in weddings

Heather and I moved in together when we were both going through some of the toughest times in our lives. It occasionally made for a pretty depressing (and very messy) apartment, but it was good for us both. We needed each other. We understood when one of us needed to talk or to drink or to stare blankly at a television. I didn't judge when she'd eat Mexican food in the bathtub. She didn't judge when I'd go through a box of cookies in one sitting. We helped each other get through. Though we had gone to college together, we didn't...

December 20, 2014
in Chicago events, Chicago Life

Other people do fancy things. Other people go to those kind of parties that cost $50 to get in. Other people get gussied up to go to a museum event, like the Last Speakeasy Chicago prohibition party, on a Thursday night. Other people. I don't. I am the kind of person who sees people doing fancy things, who sees people spend $50 on a party, who sees people getting gussied up for a museum event on a Thursday night and thinks, "other people do that." Other people. So, even though the CTA was plastered with ads for the Chicago History Museum's "Last Speakeasy...

December 15, 2014
in Chicago Life

It's been over a month since I left Athens. Stopped traveling. It's been over a month since I came back home to Chicago, since I started back at my new old job. And it's been over three years since I've been back in Chicago and working "permanently." The transition back into work has been easy. Too easy. I went back to a position I held for five years, so I already knew it inside and out. There was no grace period, no training period, no adjustment period, I was just thrown in. So much so that no one even bothered to re-teach...

December 13, 2014
in Athens, Europe, Greece, Round the World, TBEX, travel

Last year I went to TBEX Dublin and left with more inspiration, more motivation, to take my blog where I wanted it to go than I had ever had before. And then my laptop got stolen a week later and I couldn't do anything for nearly two months. This year I went to TBEX Athens and left with more inspiration, more motivation, to take my blog where I wanted it to go than I had ever had before. And then I came home a few days later and threw myself into jet lag and my new old job....

December 1, 2014
in Athens, Europe, food, Greece, Round the World, travel

Athens, Greece, is one of those cities, like Santiago, where most people only spend a night, maybe two, or skip it altogether, and say it's not worth going. They say it's just another big city, they say it's boring or dangerous or lame. It's one of those cities people write off. I had a week to spend in Athens and everyone asked why I was going. And then everyone asked if I was going to the islands. For a conference. And no....

November 10, 2014
in Europe, food, Madrid, Round the World, Spain, travel

In my travel plan, that one I made in June and almost immediately abandoned, I had thought to return to Spain after three months in South America. I wanted to spend some time there. At least a month, hopefully three, longer if that damned visa didn't exist. I first went to Spain in 2011, a month into what turned into my 15-month, or three year, depending on how you look at it, 'round the world trip. Spain was a turning point. ...

Choosing Figs


© Choosing Figs / Val Bromann
2006 –
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