When I was 21, just a few months out of college and not much experience in much of anything under my belt, I moved to Paris to teach English to bratty French grammar school kids. On my arrival, I was met with a transportation grève and trauvaux (words you learn quickly in France: strike and construction), and many hours of waiting and rerouted trains later, I finally reached my host family’s home. I didn’t know it at the time, but this confusing and frustrating entry to France was the beginning of the hardest year of my young life.

“Oh Paris!” so many people back home oohed and aahed. “I’m sooooo jealous!” These people wearied me. Didn’t they understand I had homework to grade, worksheets to prepare, groceries to buy, laundry to do, and many, many lines to wait in? (Getting anything accomplished at the bank, post office, or French equivalent of the social security office requires waiting in a way-too-long line.)

While back-homers assumed the picturesque Eiffel Tower made my every Parisian day romantic, the monument represented my constant daily struggle.

I moved three times as I struggled to find a place to live in a city where rents are higher and the rental market more competitive than New York. I struggled to succeed at teaching, because I went into the job blindly, did not have the skills to control a classroom, and was welcomed by very few staff. I struggled to understand what was going on around me because even though I spoke French better than most Americans, I was often lost in many conversations.

Above all, I struggled with loneliness. I didn’t know anyone. I visited almost every museum, cemetery, park, and attraction alone and had no one to share these experiences with. I frequently went to the movies alone. I wandered the streets of Paris, unable to enjoy the beauty because I was so freakin’ lonely. I took a night train to Biarritz one weekend because I couldn’t bear the loneliness of Paris anymore. But I was just as lonely there because I didn’t speak to anyone all weekend.

This story has a happy ending. It took time, and it took luck, but I did make friends. I found my niche in Paris and met people who welcomed me as one of their own. I did not have to spend Christmas, New Years, or my birthday alone thanks to my new friends. I bought a bike. My French skills skyrocketed and I felt (almost) as feisty and confident as my English-speaking self. To feel like yourself in a foreign language — or to crack a joke in a foreign language that people actually laugh at — man, there’s nothing better than that feeling of feeling like yourself.

That year is so vivid in my memory, and now I realize it’s because every moment was so valuable. All those lonely experiences, the figuring it out, the standing up for myself, the stumbling over my words, and then the triumph as those things became easier, forced me to grow.

I didn’t know I was growing or learning. I wasn’t trying to carpe diem. I was just trying to get my visa sorted out or feign confidence in front of a room of 30 kids who could bring me to tears if I let them. I was just trying to make it through each day. Some days were better than others, but every day of that year taught me something about myself or the world around me.

Venturing into the unknown is one of the simplest, yet hardest ways to learn. Trying to succeed at something new is a crash course in humility. And it’s also the best way to grow, challenge yourself, and stretch your brain muscles in new ways.

That’s why I decided it was time for me to leave my happy family at Threadless and try something new. It’s hard to leave best friends. It’s hard to leave the comfort of a place that feels like home. It’s hard to leave a company whose mission I feel so passionately about. It’s hard to leave a place where I laugh every day.

But it’s time for me to do something that’s hard. I need to start something new, jump into whatever those scary new waters have waiting for me. I don’t know where I’ll be a year from now. But I’ve lived through a year of the unknown before, and even when I didn’t feel it was worth it, ultimately it was. I hope this next year can be just as worthwhile.

I recently picked up Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, the new book by David Sedaris. And by picked up, I mean downloaded it from Audible to listen to while I cook, bike, or procrastinate writing assignments. This is an audiobook of the most excellent kind, because it’s read by the author. And if you’ve ever caught a snippet of an old This American Life episode, it’s likely you’ve caught a snippet of David Sedaris reading his work, and know what I am talking about. His voice is kinda weird. His style is kinda dry. His delivery is kinda perfect.

Since I’m a reader/writer type who wears glasses 99% of my waking hours (the non-glasses 1% is when I swim laps, in case you were wondering), I am often asked, “Who’s your favorite author?” I find it to be a terribly unfair question. Favorite author of WHAT? Young adult novels? Memoirs? Self help books? Recipes? “It’s hard to say…” I usually start, giving the impression that I read so much, I have hundreds of favorite authors and it’s hard to pick just one, but the real reason being is that I read so much, I don’t remember the last 10 books I read and have forgotten if I even liked them or not. I’ll usually settle on David Sedaris because he’s contemporary and chances are the inquiring mind has at least heard of him.

I guess it’s not a lie, considering that I have read all David Sedaris books ever written. That must mean I like the guy. But I have to admit, my tendency to favor the his work is not quite related to his writing, which is great, and I hope we can all agree on that. I shan’t spend too much time delving into why you should read one of his essays or memoirs. You can read an Amazon review of any of his books for that.

Really, the reason I like David Sedaris so much is because I feel like he and I have a lot in common and could potentially be friends had our paths crossed in during the time we both spent in Chicago or Paris. I am sure a lot of people feel like they relate to David Sedaris, but here’s why I relate to him more.

1. He lived in Paris, and has written many essays inspired by the many cultural miscommunications and confusions of being an American in Paris who is trying very hard not to be like all the other Americans in Paris. Also, I saw him read at a very petite Parisian bookstore, where seating was so limited I could have reached out and creepily stroked his arm from my seat.

1a. At this reading, he mentioned what metro stop he lived off of, so I am one of the few people in the world who knows where David Sedaris once lived. I also hoped to bump into him at that metro stop, “Oh David! Hi, how are you?”

1b. It was at this reading that I realized David Sedaris is not as well spoken as he is well written. You’d think by reading his work that all words that leave his brain do so smoothly and poetically, but he fumbled a bit over answering questions during the Q&A — just like ME. Give me a notebook and a pen and I can craft a wonderfully written response to whatever question you may ask, but ask me on the spot to answer, when I don’t have time to gather my thoughts and cross out and disregard all the crappy bits, and you’ll likely be a bit confused by the words that come out of my mouth. I am not as good of a verbal communicator as I am written communicator.

1c. David Sedaris and I certainly both agree that the woman who snapped photos during his reading when the audience was told that taking pictures was not allowed is just so rude. She apologized at the end — the photos are for her son, you know — but David and I were both not impressed. Don’t apologize for taking the photos when you were asked to not take photos. Just don’t take photos, and no apology is necessary.

2. David Sedaris is a master observer of people. I encounter many persons who claim to love “people watching,” but I rarely encounter someone who does so with such dedication and fervor as David Sedaris does. Whether he’s waiting in line at a coffee shop, sitting next to someone on a plane, or meets someone at one of his readings, he takes note of what shoes they are wearing, what color their nails are painted, and the exact placement of every single one of their teeth. He then uses those clues to create an elaborate and imaginative backstory about each individual he encounters, then writes about them. I, too, do this, but with much less skill and finesse. I mostly just create elaborate stories in my head about people who piss me off to entertain myself and not be pissed off at them anymore.

3. Actually I don’t have anything else besides 1 and 2, so maybe David Sedaris and I aren’t best friend soulmates after all. Maybe I think we have a lot in common because we were really close to each other in a room once. Oh well, I still enjoy listening to him read his books. He is my favorite author after all.

I fell into the New Years Resolution trap back in January. Like many people, I took a look at my goals and what I wanted to accomplish and realized I had some things to work on in order to make progress. And so, now five months later, I am going to take a painful look at what those resolutions were, and see if I accomplished any of them.

Here they are courtesy of my good friend Kenny, whom I still owe bloodies and brunch to for these illustrations. I thought if I could put these on my fridge, I might remember them better and be more apt to follow them.

1. Word of the year: patience. I can be impatient. My impatiences leads to frustration. My frustration leads me to no good. I realize this about myself, so five months ago, made it my mission to be more patient. Did I succeed? Hm… I am not sure. Some days, I am more patient than others. But I guess you’d have to ask my friends and coworkers if they have noticed an improvement. Fingers crossed they say yes!

2. Finish one task before starting another. This is a work in progress, but I AM getting better at not multi-tasking. The digital world makes it tough, especially with notifications. I’ll be in the middle of writing something, and a gchat window will start flashing out of the corner of my eye, a Facebook notification will “ding!” or my phone will buzz. These things are screaming “LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME!” even though they’re rarely important. So I’m getting better at shutting that stuff off so I can really focus on the task at hand. Much of my distractedness is my own fault. If I’m in the middle of writing something and it’s not going smoothly, I’m tempted to check my email, look at my phone, or chat someone for a quick distraction. I know that changing focus will just make it harder to refocus when I come back. So I might close my email, put my phone out of reach, close chat programs, and put on headphones prevent myself from talking to anyone around me. And it works! I end up being way more productive. I just need to do more of it.

3. Write 500 words a day. Hrm… this resolution was originally meant to push me do more personal writing, which I did for the first few days of the year. But I just got too busy writing for other people. And it’s hard to write for myself when other people are paying me to write for them. So I don’t consider this one a failure, since my priorities have changed. I am writing more than ever through all my freelance projects. Certainly more than I wrote last year.

4. Brush my teeth before bed. No comment. You may think this is gross but I go to the dentist twice a year and never have cavities. I bet I will this year now that I said that.

5. Finish my French homework and write down new words. I take French classes off and on to keep up my fluency. But I could always do better. There is still much I don’t know. And the only way to improve my skills is to truly study the language, not just show up to class, half heartedly do the homework, and get frustrated if I’m a little lost. I did pretty well with this for my first class at the beginning of the year, but I haven’t taken class since then (the overabundance of freelance work has had a lot to do with it. So has the laziness.) But I am starting a new class tonight so I will make an effort to make the most of it.

6. Go on new Chicago adventures every month. Chicago’s a great city, but a lot of us rarely leave the neighborhoods we live in to explore others. One time towards the beginning of the year Jake and I went to Avondale and explored a bit. A couple weekends ago I went to Chinatown for dim sum and a little shopping. So… that’s two neighborhoods out of… this many. Not a very impressive record.

Recap: Not doing so great on these resolutions five months in. Humpf. It’s my own fault.

In the wee hours of this morning, as I was half asleep with a content kitty dozing beside me, I realized I had learned an important life lesson.

It starts with my split personality cat. Either she’s curled up purring on my lap, or she’s pacing around the apartment howling. And howl is definitely the right word here. I’ve never heard another cat make sounds that mimic wailing babies. Her most favorite time to howl is around 4 a.m.

Which leads me to this morning. I was woken up by the terrifying WWWWWWWOOOOOORAAWWWWA howling noise that distinctly comes from my cat at unreasonable hours. This has been happening for months. There was a time I tried to ignore it, thinking she would wear herself out and stop. She wouldn’t. My next solution was to feed her, thinking after she ate, she would shut up. She wouldn’t. I tried getting out of bed, firmly scolding her, then gently placing her on her favorite blanket on the couch, thinking it would make her happy. It didn’t. Nothing worked, so that left me lying awake in bed restless and tired, unable to sleep because our flimsy bedroom door does little to muffle her wails.

I was out of ideas, so I tried something radical. I grabbed the cat, carried her into the bedroom, and plopped her down next to me in bed. The last thing I wanted to do was bring a howling cat with me to the exact place I am trying to sleep and avoid the howling cat. But I hoped it would calm her down. And it did. The howling stopped almost instantly. She immediately got cozy, and fell asleep.

This was baffling. The cat sleeps on the bed all the time, so if she was feeling lonely, all she had to do was hop in. That seems perfectly logical to me. But… I am not a cat. Who knows what is going on in her little cat brain.

So when I finally got silence this morning, I could think about what the cat had taught me: the most obvious or logical way to approach a problem may not provide the best solution. Be they a cat, a colleague, or a random person on the street, I can’t assume that I understand why someone is acting a certain way. I guess I have always know that, but it’s taken 20 years of cat ownership for it to hit home.