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Side Bar: March Madness
Truly, Madness. It was a whirlwind of a month with E moving and getting everything prepped for that, but here are the highlights: Vacation in Puerto Vallarta. I mean, Mexico is beautiful, the beach is amazing, food is delicious, and you can’t beat sitting just a few feet away from the water while drinking fruity cocktails all day. 2. At the beach I read White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin DiAngelo and it is a must read. I have recommended it to so many colleagues and took so many notes—eye opening and had me yelling “aha!” at the beach because it…
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Side Bar: Spooky Scary
It’s November–yikes. I still have a few new year’s resolutions to meet (yes, I’m still keeping track because they’re on a ~vision board~ that stares at my face every morning. And I think I’m weird enough to try and get them accomplished before the end of the year. But before that, can I just say that October was crazy short. It was a whirlwind. Starting with work–we had Latinx heritage month celebrations, which are always super fun. I wasn’t able to do too much planning of it this year, but the events I went to were great. I had a lot of fundraising events to attend and that included an…
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Side Bar: Summer Nights
July can’t be over because that means I only have one week with interns left. Waaaa! This summer has been nothing if not productive. If I play my cards right, I will have filed TEN applications this month, which is unheard of (for me)! Ok but other than filing cases, July was like perfect Chicago summer for me. July included some fun at the beach My best friend visited from Tx and I got to hang with my baby buddy Lincoln! Hung out with my prima (who’s going back to Tampa soon 🙁 ) She finished her semester and will be going back for the fall semester in…
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Side Bar: At the Beach
So full disclosure—I had hoped to make the sidebar post more visual (i.e. video format) but that will have to wait until I move in the summer because the way my current house is set up, the acoustics are just turrible. Turrible. Anyway, June went by hella fast. Probably because I went on a much needed vacation! Like obviously seeing my dad and his family was great, but the sun! Omg, it was much needed. So let’s just start with that—Panama was beautiful. I really recommend it as a vacation destination. I spent some time in city and in smaller parts of the country. Staying at my dad’s place is…
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Sidebar: Rest and Relaxation
April owes me nothing! It was a great month full of rest. Much needed. It started with a big professional accomplishment—I facilitated my first city-wide town hall meeting by myself. How grown up lol Basically the city often puts on open meetings to discuss important issues and receive feedback from community. And of course depending on the topic, things can go south. Thankfully, my years of experience training other attorneys, facilitating discussions, and camera work all prepared me to take this on. I was really nervous for lots of reasons but not only did it not go terrible, people enjoyed my approach so it was nice to be able to…
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Sidebar: Surviving a Chicago Winter
Happy new year (a month and two weeks late)! It’s so funny because in the fall, I wrote about how things felt a little more normal and then of course the next wave came and put everything back on pause. How much longer is this going to take? Very frustrating. But easing into the year wasn’t a bad thing, it let me really plan out my time and focus on my health a little more. And that was really the theme in January–getting more in tune with how I feel/making healthier decisions. So, I think I mentioned that at my annual the Dr realized I had extremely low vitamin D.…
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Sidebar: Things just keep on moving
Goodbye 2021! And lets hope it’s not 2020 part II—seriously, I’d like to live in precedented times for a bit—us Millennials have had enough of “once in a generation” experiences, thank you very much. But whatever 2022 has in store, I guess I’m ready lol And thankfully this past year was not as tumultuous as the one before. It felt like things were stabilizing or at least felt more manageable. I returned to the office five days a week; was triple vaccinated; finally saw my mom!; celebrated my 12 anniversary in Tampa (the Paris of the US); had a lot of great moments with this community; and had a lot…
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Sidebar: Grateful
This month felt a lot more like the “before times” than ever before and that is a good and bad thing. So the good, because of the booster, we felt comfortable enough visiting my in-laws, which I haven’t seen in a long time. This meant an overnight trip the farm! I haven’t been there in forever and while some things were a little different (no more cows), everything else was like nothing had changed. Good food, E got to play IT expert to make sure his parents stay connected to the internet and it was really nice to get away. It’s hard to describe how calm and quiet it is.…
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Sidebar: So this is Adulting…
Wow, January was ridiculously long, was it not? I mean was it just last month we feared entering a serious war? What is this life even? One thing I’ve done to keep myself semi-sane is to keep focused just on local news. I know it’s a little bit like head in the sand mentality, which isn’t great, but I just can’t consume all this news all the time. Plus, local news is really pertinent to my job so it helps two-fold… Speaking of work, I made it to the six month mark! I can say that I finally, truly feel steady about what I’m doing and have found a rhythm…
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Sidebar: 2020 Vision, lessons for the new year
It’s still early enough in 2020 to share the vision and plan for the new year, right? Just asking because the new cycle moves fast & we’re basically on the brink of god knows what but trying to not live in terror, you know the vibezzz. #hidethepainharold 2019 was such a year of growth for me and I want to share some lessons I learned (some the hard way!) and hopes for the new year. One. Have the courage to change. Easier said than done! But 2019 was when I realized that if I wanted to grow in my career I needed to seek new challenges. It would have been…