Where to begin.

10 years ago, I started a blog. I was 30 and pretty recently married. I was also blissfully unaware of just about everything that the future holds. I have lost close friends, family, changed jobs, grown up (not really) and just lived. Nothing can prepare you for shit.

I like to think of myself as a pretty sane human; I deal with the public on a daily basis so the elements that are nutty, I blame on you all. When I started the blog, I was working in a salon and slowly stepping away from that life and into a full-time makeup artist and 10 years later, I have moved up in my career and I love it. I travel around to different states and do what I love! Married 13 years this year (2019), dog is still kicking. I am successful in many facets of my life!  Sounds perfect huh? It's great on paper. I am missing something! I have this burning desire to do something more and I cannot figure out what it is. I'll come back to this...

In 2018 I turned 40. How? How the fuck did that happen? I swear the last thing I remembered prior to 2/11/18 was my 30th birthday! I was dancing on a bar to "Apple bottom jeans, boots with the furrrrr" bags packed in the trunk to fly to Vegas (which we missed the flight) and I was 30! You're welcome by the way because that song sticks in your brain for hours... Now it is ALMOST 11 years later and I am old. Yea, I said it. Get off my back. WE ARE OLD! "Age ain't nothing but a number" BULLSHIT. Tell that to my tits. The strangest part of that pesky number is? I don't feel it. I know I am but my brain and heart tell me that I am 25. I am still as reckless as ever, a night owl, I will still get up on that bar and dance and I will still get in some sort of trouble. The only difference is now people clutch their pearls that an old broad is acting so disgusting. It's a struggle.

So, in my new decade of life, I said to myself "do something! Do something that finally means something to you! Something that feeds your soul!" Not to say that my job doesn't fire me up but how many times a day can I think to myself " I am a makeup artist, not a magician" ( don't show me another Kim K smokey eye!) One day over coffee, one of my best gals Phyllis told me to "Join Second City. Do some stand-up. Do some writing. Just do something because people just tune into you. It is a gift. Do something with it." I said I would and well, I didn't. I honestly didn't have the time last year. I was very busy! Over the year I tried to do a weekly podcast, more work than I imagined. I tried to do a weekly live show that actually did last a bit from 2016-2018...I don't count that one out just yet because we still pop on here and there. Recently an old girlfriend of mine asked me about my old blog that I had hosted on Chicago Now dot com and why I stopped doing it?  Oddly enough, a few days prior I was talking to another girlfriend of mine about restarting this up. Fast forward to present day 1/11/19...and here we are.

I realize that my dating advice that I gave 10 years ago, probably is now Old Fashion so I will keep that topic light but I just cannot help myself but go there because seriously people, what the hell are yous doing?!?! My mind is in constant overdrive so we shall see what this next leg of the journey holds!

Thanks for coming back to me. Like everyone else in my past, you come back to me! Maybe this will fill the void I have been feeling. Maybe this will fill a void YOU'VE been feeling. Maybe I will be bored after putting this one up and I go back to a lackluster existence and be the old lady that I am. Who knows, but I am hopped up now!

Love you all and always!

Your friend,

Jen