I’m terribly sorry that I haven’t updated since I moved to Prague. You see, it’s like this:

I want a simple life. And one of the biggest reasons I moved here is the strong determination I’ve adopted to map out a life for myself that isn’t lived behind this computer screen. So when I can avoid it, I do. Thus a lack of posting. Don’t feel that I don’t want to keep in touch, but I’d much rather communicate with my readers more directly at this phase instead of just sending my words out into the void. So find me on facebook, email me or call. And keep an eye out for postcards!

I’m not saying I’ll never post again (yet), but don’t bother checking for a while… ’cause I’m taking an extended vacation.

Sincerely, your loving wanderer,

CAT

Dear Atlanta,

I know we haven’t always been the very best of friends. I was perhaps a little harsh on you when I moved there four years ago. But you’ve grown on me as I’ve gotten to know your people, your neighborhoods.

Standing on the rooftop looking over you I realized that a truth I never expected as come to pass: I will miss you Atlanta. And I’m proud to say I’ve shared some years with you.

I’ll visit someday. Until then,

Your friend, CAT

For those of you living in and passing through Atlanta, please patronize these places and give them a little extra with love from me:

Best of the Best

I literally cannot say enough good about these locations.
These spots are irreplaceable and will be deeply missed.

Brick Store Pub

Octane Coffee

Trinity

Other spots of honorable mention:

Best brunch: Highland Bakery
Best queso: Taqueria del Sol
Best bocodillo and second best queso: La Fonda
Best morning-walk coffee: Belly
Best porch for sitting in the sun: Dancing Goats
Best mahi-mahi sandwich: Eclipse di Sol
Best burger: Vortex
Best sangria: Solstice
Best karaoke: Southern Comfort

So this week I’m taking a little road trip across the southeast to visit friends and family before my move to Prague in a few weeks. Charlotte is the stop for this evening and I’m treating my friends Laura, Michael and Ryan here to a little beer tasting – Aventinus 2004 Vintage (German), Tripel Karmeliet (Belgian), and Duchesse de Bourgogne (Flemish). While reviewing my notes, I came across this posting that I did a few years ago when I still worked at Octane. Since I’m celebrating the past as I look into my future, I’m going to repost.

These samplers never actually got used (though they are ©Cat Norman), but I had a lot of fun making them. And, who knows? Maybe I’ll readapt them down the road someday?

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When I was a kid, I got great pleasure out of organizing things. (Note: I am not “neat” or “clean”, I just like organization.) I would spend hours pouring through the garden and bush in our compound to find just the right flowers for a flower arrangement to put on the table. Then, when I was a little older, I spent my time arranging my earring collection (amassed over a hundred pairs of large dangly earrings!). With the help of a rack my grandpa built, I could organize by size, color, emotional attachment, or current mood, and reorganize at will! Now my sense of “beautiful” arrangement displays itself in the beer fridge at Octane Coffee.

I’ve been working at Octane for almost a year now. The best part about the group is that everyone who works there is passionate about something – for M’lissa, it’s coffee education; for Aly, it’s community service and aid; for Matt, it’s recycling and the environment; etc. I like organizing and educating about our beer. Passions are encouraged and everyone brings Octane up to their own high standards in each area. Octane tries to be great at whatever it does, and limits the food and drinks to aim at quality over quantity.

I spend a lot of time at Octane stocking the beer fridge, rearranging it by country, alphabetical order, style, etc. It’s my earring rack on a whole new level! I learn more and more about each beer and style as I am ordering new stock, and talking to customers about them. I’ve noticed that a lot of our customers know that we serve great coffee, but don’t know a lot about the quality of our beer. M’lissa does weekly coffee cuppings on Mondays that educate anyone willing to learn about the differences in coffee styles, processing methods, etc. Inspired by that, I’ve been working on a DIY beer sampler pack that will allow anyone interested to sample 3 or 5 beers, as an introduction to Belgian beer.

You’ll see below the Five Beer and Three Beer samplers I designed, wrote text for, and did a little photoshoot or two for. I learned a lot of interesting tidbits of information – like that the proceeds from Trappist ales go to charity or the work of the monastery they were brewed in, no profit kept.

Thanks to Janet for text editing, all the Octaners who posed for the pictures, and Wikipedia, Beer Advocate, and RateBeer for the education.

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It was certainly not a place for her. The only physical location that ever came close to taking on that role was the old mud brick house in Ogbomoso she lived in from age 6 to 12. With head propped against the back of her bed, she would watch the lightening dance through the sky as the storm breathed life into the billowing pale green curtain, tickling her face playfully as it flew back and forth, up and down. Yes, it was home that night. When she went back to visit 5 years later, she found it so uncomfortable to see those dusty window screens, naked and exposed, and she was forced to divert her eyes past them in embarrassment. They had cut down the climbing tree in the front yard.

House was never a home after that.

Home for her was exactly what she wasn’t. Cat’s parents were foreign missionaries with the foreign mission board. The home mission board was a different thing all together and it wasn’t their department. So because she was a foreigner at the onset, the answer to the most common question asked of her was as as obvious as it was impossible for her to give. “Where are you from? Where is home for you?”, they’d implore curiously for an answer. And, yes, there was a moment when ‘home’ was a country. “USA! We’re American!”, she’d reply then. With great excitement she took a year furlough to the home that she’d promised so many that she had. The first day of eighth grade the kids gathered around with great curiosity and pressed, “Where are you from?”

After that, she stopped answering the question.

She learned to think of home in much the same way that others think of a dream job. It became for her a romantic idea, but she believed it to be unattainable. The more romanticized her view of home became over time, the more she searched to fulfill the dream. But because of it’s perceived impossibility, she still met no great disappointment when she discovered the a locale, job or social group were still not the home she was hoping to identify with. Then she began to embrace the freedom that came with her conceptual homelessness and idealized her wanderlust to spite the home she didn’t have.

She wasn’t tied down after that.

Now only occasionally is she distracted from her blissful, weightless wandering by the eerie promise, that “…in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home, the end to all flight is unbearable.”

Now the word ‘home’ makes her uncertain about her future.

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She sat across from her friends and they asked her, “When will you return home?” Her loss for words. Her anxiety. They didn’t understand. There was no way they could.

So in an attempt to dim the offenses I may have committed towards people in my own life through similar misunderstandings, I am going to engage in a short blog series that I will unimaginatively title – “A Short Dictionary of (Potentially) Misunderstood Words”. I am going to mimic Kundera’s style and speak in third person just for kicks, so humor me.

- posts to follow -

Milestones. In Review.

Well first off there was that whole economy thing that set my photo income numbers off right from the start.

My garden was ok, but things didn’t grow quite as vibrantly as I hoped.

Then I broke up with said ‘man I loved’ and entered into a brief period we will term ‘the dark night of the soul’.

Well that gets us about half way through the year, at which point my life became decidedly more amazing than it has ever been. Seriously. I blossomed out of all that into a wonderful period of change and hope where I was free to rethink what I wanted, what I was doing, and what my dreams for my life are.

So I took a month-long holiday in Spain – where I walked the most grueling and wonderful 630 kilometers through the northern part of Spain. I met the most amazing people and rethought everything. On the plane ride back I noted in my journal, “I have a strong feeling as we land, that I am coming back, only to say goodbye.”

Then I got back, established incredible friendships with friends here, packed out of my apartment at 740 Barnett St., and gave away my garden. Life as a nomad began.

My photo income numbers picked up – and while I didn’t make much more than 2008, I certainly didn’t make less.

I then headed to China for a month to do some photo work. Also, an incredible experience in a country a love deeply with more wonderful people.

I returned from that to close out the rest of the year here in Atlanta with previously mentioned incredible friends and have met even more individuals who I’ve grown to love. There are so many amazing people living in Atlanta and I’m starting to think I’ve been given the opportunity to meet the cream of the crop.

And that brings us to today. December 31st, 2009. My first 25 years of life behind me and an increasingly phenomenal life ahead. Even with the ups and downs, I wouldn’t have done any of it differently if I could.

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So with 2010 right around the corner, this is what I’ve got to look forward to:

I’m saying goodbye to Atlanta, like I thought I would on the return trip from Spain, to move to Prague, Czech Republic. I’m a nomad again and my life is going to continue to blossom as it always does in periods of change. I’m entering into the most promising year of my life yet with the support of all those wonderful friends I have here in Atlanta and all around the world.

So, Happy New Year from me! Here’s to 2010!

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Oh, and my new year’s resolution?

LOVE EVERY MINUTE OF IT.

You see, I want to use this blog as an avenue to explain all the things I’ve learned over the last year and let that serve to give you an understanding of my confident decision to make big changes in my life. Maybe I’ll eventually get in all into words, or maybe you’ll just have to trust me when I say that I’ve put a lot of thought into it.

So… I’m moving to Prague!

(Yeah, yeah – I’ve been talking about it for months, so if you’ve seen me, you are probably already sick of hearing about it already, but for those I see less often…)

I am moving there to work with a group of hostels in Prague. I’ll start out doing everything from reception, bartending and working with the marketing team doing some design and photography. I am so so excited about this opportunity and every part of the planning and interacting we done this far makes me confident that it is going to be really good fit. I’ll still be keeping up ‘Cat Norman Photography‘ minimally – maintaining a few travel clients and personal projects. I’ll be in the Czech Republic for at least the next few years, so please come visit! I leave the States in late February.

Šťastný nový rok! Happy New Year! I hope 2010 holds as much promise for you as it does for me!