July 30, 2019

Félécite

This Friday, I’m taking Félécite to the DMV for the 3rd time and final time. God willing, she’ll pass her learner’s permit test and finally achieve one of her longstanding personal goals: to drive. Why the 3rd? Because the Illinois Secretary of State… rather, the entire local government… is a bureaucratic nightmare, and this girl also takes a million years to get ready. Why final? Because it’s my last day in Chicago, and the pesky but important last thing I need to do before I go.

Félécite is my friend and refugee mentee, a young Rwandan woman who arrived from the Congo last year with her sister and baby niece. She works a tough job at O’Hare sealing airplane meals with plastic wrap from afternoon to midnight, and the trip there can take from 45 minutes to an hour in public transit. It’s a commute I know all too well. A car would make the family’s life so much easier. It means time back in the day for Félé, a ride to church for her sister, and help carrying the groceries home. And on the weekend, it means trips up to Wisconsin to see the boyfriend she loves and days spent at the beach, dancing in the waves.

Anyone who lives in this city knows that it’s not the most accessible, despite the spiderwebbing L-train that links us together. I see my friends who live across the Chicago River less often than I see my therapist. But nearly 10% of Cook County residents live in a transit desert – 10%! – restricting their mobility to reach jobs or important amenities. For low-income households, the majority of entry-level positions are outside of the CTA system entirely. The 2014 report where I found all this information states that transportation is the average household’s second-largest expense.

Working with Félé, I found that she and many others in her community have this and so many other barriers to overcome on top of fleeing war or violence or persecution, including language, cultural differences, and education. So many things that were once everyday occurrences to me – like getting sick and buying medicine, filing my taxes, or eating at a restaurant – required a lot of help, patience, translation, and childcare.

Of course, she’s so independent, so I’m not worried about the family once I can’t visit regularly anymore. One of my smallest, but most striking realizations was that like any friend, Felecite could occasionally annoy the crap out of me. That her incredible drive and strong will could also manifest into a stubbornness to equal mine, and that we could quarrel in broken conversation or that I’d roll my eyes after taking the millionth photo of her for her Instagram. Love, silliness, and frustration. It’s all very human, isn’t it?

Wish us luck.

XX Liane

July 18, 2019

Chicago

Hey.

I’m moving at the end of the month. I’m finding a new home again.

To everyone, myself included, this was entirely unexpected. Chicago’s not a cold city (metaphorically, not literally! duh!) but it has its distances, its special rhythms that keep you at a remove. Segregate neighborhoods, secret societies, half-years spent hidden away in parka coats and underground tunnels. After two years here, the ice was just starting to thaw, and I’ll miss it. I’ll miss it a lot. But it’s not too hard to say goodbye.

XX Liane

(PS: This is what it’s like to live here.)

March 3, 2019

Screenwriting 101

I took a film class called “Screenwriting 101” at Second City this spring. The instructor was brilliant. They were great at breaking down the elements of film/TV, explaining writing room dynamics, and advising us on the “behind the scenes” business skills needed to make it. But what I was most impressed with was their patience and ability to tailor their message to everyone in the room, which was a small and super diverse microcosm of Chicago. Since I’d moved here, I’d really never met so many different people from these different backgrounds and walks of life– including a newlywed couple, a film school student, a factory worker retiree, a nonbinary artist, and a rough-talking gurney transporter. So that was pretty cool. One exercise we did every week was to collectively compile a huge list of art together based on a certain prompt, which we were then challenged to consume before our next class. I enjoyed it so much (and learned so much!) that I recreated a couple of our icebreakers below.

  1. What’s something you wish you had created?
  2. What’s something you could have created?
  3. What have you created that you’re most proud of?
  4. Who and what inspires you?
  5. What art has changed your life, and why?
  6. What art has most touched your heart, made you feel most known and understood, taught you about yourself, or called you out?
  7. What’s an art with a foreign POV (e.g. not white, straight, able or male) that you’d recommend?
  8. Share something insightful, clever, or smart.
  9. Shame on you! Share what you haven’t seen or listened to, or worse, something that everyone likes that you just don’t get.
  10. Finally, share your all-time favorites.

I’m still working on my answers, so stay tuned to see the full article at strtchmrks.com.

XX Liane

February 4, 2019

Chinese New Year’s Resolutions

One of my calendar new year goals was to finally, finally build a personal website.

If you’re reading this, I’m happy to report that it’s been checked off the list.

So, then what? Well, seeing as I had made adequate progress towards my annual resolutions by mid-January, I immediately backslid and got caught up in the all-too-escapable wave of tedium that defines modern life. Long work weeks, bingeing a Netflix show I don’t even like, a brief but gripping Stardew Valley addiction… but hey! It’s the new year again, albeit the lunar one, so we’re putting that all behind for a second fresh start.

Today, I wanted to share some of my 2019 hopes, wishes and dreams– turned into quantitative inputs for a radar graph and spreadsheet dashboard, of course.

Liane’s Wheel of Life

The “wheel of life,” I believe, is a cosmic Buddhist symbol that some guru repurposed into a time management concept, which I subsequently heard about on Reddit and repurposed towards my personal life.

Here she is.

Wheel of Life
Wheel of Life

Essentially, I create categories as needed to try and identity the areas of my life I want to bring into balance. Once or twice a year, I’ll re-evaluate where I stand on an extremely subjective 1 to 5 scale and see what parts I want to focus more attention on. The idea isn’t necessarily to strive for all 5’s, but to reduce some of the whiplash or anxiety I get when my fun v. finances, career v. community, relationship v. family, etc. are at different extremes. Looking at it now, I’m able to recognize some of my achievements I might not have noticed otherwise, and it also helps to alleviate comparisons to other people/perfectionism because all I’m really trying to do is be the best version of myself. Cheers to gamification.

2019 Resolutions

When I’m writing out goals, the wheel also helps me make sure I’m not leaving anything out. I’ll spare you the full list, but I love to color code them and break them into overarching resolutions. These are mine:

  1. Become the person my teenage self dreamed of growing up into! (Learning, Spirit)
  2. Take professional risks. (Career)
  3. Make Chicago feel like home. (Community, Fun)

That’s it for now.

Wish me luck!

XX Liane

liane.yue@gmail.com