Madison Rodick: coffee shops

Twenty.

On October 17th, I turned twenty years old! What a day. It was so weird waking up and realizing that I was no longer in my teens. I had a great weekend, especially because I got to see some of my good friends. I got tons of great gifts, and I went on a fun date with Quinn too! Here are some pictures from my special weekend (:

Quinn and I went to P.F. Chang's at the Plaza for my birthday dinner and I wore...

Black Lace Romper//Gianni Bini - similar one here

Camel Colored//Steve Madden - similar ones here

The picture we took outside was posed by a 13-foot tall Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters (my mom is a huge dork for buying that, but we all love it).

On my actual birthday I went to a new coffee shop in downtown Kansas City with my friend Frankye. The coffee was great and it was it a really cool area. I wore...

Rose Gold Opal Necklace//Kendra Scott

Dark Wash Skinny Jeans//Levi's

Purse//Kate Spade - similar one here

Sunglasses//Ray Ban

Oversized Sweater//thrift store - similar one here

Black Flats//similar ones here

Until next time...

Madison

Song of the Day: A Sunday Kind of Love//Etta James

p.s. My twenties are going just swell...

Tales from your local coffee shop

Today's coffee shop tales come from Indigo Coffee Shop & Bookstore. I sit here writing to you from this super cool room with sweet gold foil ceiling tiles and intricate wood designs. I got a mocha, the usual, and I spent about two hours going through Facebook and Twitter catching up on everything there is to know in the world of social media. This table that I'm sitting at is super cool because it's next to a window and it looks out over a main downtown street in the Haymarket District. It gives you pretty sweet vibes.

They even have one of those cool "take a book, leave a book" areas (too bad I don't have a book I could leave because otherwise I would totally participate). I think those things are the coolest. I really love book stores, but not just Barnes & Noble and the big chains, but those little ones that are tucked away with cozy reading corners and cool stories along the shelves. It makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop. (Hopefully all of my English teachers throughout the years will appreciate this). I also love coffee, so this whole coffee shop bookstore thing is really working out for me. The only thing that would make this place better is if there was a little bit of mood lighting, I'm a big fan of lamps (#lamplife5ever #ILoveLamp).

*Sidenote - I really love how I can just write about whatever I want on here, and in my own style. Like, yes I talk in hashtags sometimes, and yes I think I'm really funny in case you were wondering. I guess you could just say #MillennialProbs. I think I spend 50% of the time trying to convince people that I'm funny. Which I guess could mean that I'm not actually funny, or just half funny. (I'm giving this too much thought). If you know me, you know that I can be really sarcastic, and I like to impersonate people when I tell stories with their "voices" (I use quotations because their voices usually sound nothing like the way I sound when I'm talking like them (usually this applies to my mom, sorry mom). Anyways, back to what I was talking about earlier...

I love looking down the street and seeing all the lights lit up. It reminds me of New York, only on a way smaller scale. I used to close my curtains and pretend the lights showing through in my dorm room were the lights in NYC (they were actually the glistening lights of Plaza 900, our subpar dining hall, but a girl can dream). Missing those sorts of things about NYC makes me wonder if I will ever want to move there some day. Sometimes I think I want to, and other days I remember it's signature smell of pee and cigarettes and I reevaluate my choices... Other things I don't know if I could live without include green grass (I know there's Central Park, but there's just something about green grass that puts you in a happy mood). Also, I love driving and I definitely wouldn't be able to do that in New York. I love going for a drive to clear my head (it's not as relaxing as it used to be though ever since my radio antenna blew away as I was driving down the highway, now I only get 4/10 radio stations but it's better than nothing. Also, no I don't have an aux cord, I drive an '05 Mazda 6 - too old to have an aux and too new to have a tape recorder).

Well, I suppose I've rambled on long enough for now. Until tomorrow or next time...

XO

Madison

Song of the Day: 10,000 Weight in Gold//The Head and the Heart (love them so much)

p.s. I'm pretty sure I saw a drug deal go on this morning as I was driving to work, it was a weird start to a not-so-interesting day. Also, here are some cool pics of the coffee shop I'm at!

Places I'd rather be

If you follow other bloggers, you might notice that they get to go to some seriously cool places. Well as you all know I would love to travel to just about anywhere and everywhere, so if you know anyone who wants to pay for me to go on a vacation and have me write about it, hmu (just kidding, not really, I really want to travel somewhere cool and I love writing, so best of both worlds).

Anyways, here are a couple of places I'd rather be today...

Hello. I feel like every time I start writing a blog post I say the same thing, "wow, it's been forever since I last wrote on here...blah blah...I'm going to start writing more regularly...and then I say something about why I haven't written in a while, and it's usually because I'm always really busy." Well today I'm not going to say all of that. (: I'm just going to dive in, and give you an update on what I've been up to lately.

The last time I wrote I was fresh off a plane from the big apple. Today, it's mid-June and I'm fresh off the work day from my summer internship. Now it's time to let you know what all happened in between...

I finished my freshman year of college at Mizzou. I will be transferring to the University of Nebraska in the fall. Most people don't understand why I would leave Mizzou since it's such a great Journalism school, but to be completely honest I just don't think Mizzou is the place for me. There's a little bit more to it, but that's the short version. Some people will say I'm just going to Nebraska because that's where my boyfriend goes, and yeah that's a definite plus, but it's not why I decided to go there. However, sometimes people would rather create their own version of your story than really listen to what you have to say. Oh well.

My freshman year of college went by really quickly, it was a great year filled with lots of ups and downs and lots of changes. Changes for the better. Sometimes I like to think of it as growing pains. We all know what it feels like when you're little and it hurts sometimes because you're body and your mind is growing and changing and maturing. Well, just because I stopped getting taller doesn't necessarily mean those growing pains go away. I don't think they ever will, but each time I grow I look back and realize I'm a little bit stronger, and a little bit wiser, and maybe it doesn't hurt so bad after all. I suppose that's how I like to look at college and getting older.

I mentioned my boyfriend, Quinn, earlier. Well, everything with Quinn and I is going just swell. Seriously, really great. He's pretty great if you ask me.

In the last couple of months my family experienced two deaths. My great grandfather, and my great aunt passed away within a couple of weeks of each other. It was really sad, but mostly because it just didn't seem real. I wasn't super close to either of them, and sometimes I look back and it makes me sad because I wish I could ask them questions or listen to some of their stories, but I no longer can. It's a pretty sobering realization when the thought of someone crosses your mind, and then you remember they won't be at that next holiday. You won't be calling them up on Father's day because they won't be there to pick up the phone. It's pretty sad. But at the same time it's nice to get together with your family and remember the good times and the nice memories you shared with the ones you love. So in a time of sorrow, there's also joy.

On a more positive note, I started a summer internship at a digital marketing agency. It's pretty cool and I'm excited to have the opportunity to gain so much experience at this point in my academic career. I'll keep you updated on how it all goes.

In between all of that were dinners, and movie dates, and time spent with friends and family. Here are a few pictures to catch you up.

Quinn's birthday breakfast!

Watching Friends on the Quad instead of studying for finals.

Admiring how pretty Jesse Hall is.

Quinn and Anna being silly.

Quinn being goofy at Olive Garden when my dad wasn't looking.

My bestest pal Frankye and I at her sisters grad party!

Quinn and I walking around at the Plaza.

Frankye and I at the Florence & the Machine concert(!!)

Quinn and I celebrating date night with some Jack Stack BBQ.

Friends!

Q and I (again) (:

Me with my friend Lauren, the bride-to-be!

Hope that got you all caught up, for now at least(:

Song of the day: Go With Me // Quinn Mosier (!)

Until next time,

Madison

New York Part II

Wow, I feel like it has been so long since I last wrote on here. So much has happened in the last couple of weeks. For one, I went to New York over my Spring Break!

I went to NYC with my friends Grace, Frankye, and Sydney and we stayed at an Airbnb (basically you rent someone's apartment from them for a couple of days) right by One World Trade Center. Everything worked out great for us, the only thing I would've have changed is to find somewhere that's closer to the subway next time, but other than that we had a really good experience with our Airbnb.

While I was in NYC I got to go to places like Mashable, Teen Vogue, Wenner Media (Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, US Weekly), Time Inc. (People, Food & Wine, Entertainment Weekly, Travel & Leisure, etc.), and I also got to talk to the Co-founder of the Clover letter, and the former Director of Toughness for Columbia Apparel (she just got done traveling the world for 6 months and testing out Columbia's gear, and she's also a writer for Rolling Stone, among others). All of these people were seriously so cool. I feel so fortunate to have gone and had such an awesome experience meeting so many awesome people.

Everyone kept asking me what my goal was for going to New York and why I was meeting so many people, and honestly the answer is so simple: I just wanted to make friends and create professional relationships with people I admired. The people I talked to have all gone through the same crappy prerequisite requirements that I am going through right now, and we have all seen better days and experienced successes (and more importantly, failures) in the journalism world. One of the biggest realizations I came to after meeting all of these people was the fact that they are just that, real people. They all put their pants on one leg at a time just like me. And they gave me some really great advice too, for one, always Be Genuine.

Don't go into a meeting with someone you've never met and just feel like you can ask them for all of their connections, it's actually super rude to do that. When I met the Photo Editor at Mashable she told me something that I thought was really interesting. She said "so many people come in here and immediately start asking me for an internship or for the emails of my contacts, it's rude, and why would I do that for them? It's the difference of someone like that who comes in thirsty for an internship and immediately starts asking for things and someone who comes in with no agenda at all, other than to talk to me about what I do in the industry and how I got here (that's me). For the first person I would email their information to HR, for the second person I would hand deliver their information to HR and give them a great recommendation for a potential job or internship." The way you approach certain things or certain people seriously makes all the difference. I left the building not feeling nervous to talk at all (other than the sheer joy and excitement of being in one of the coolest newsrooms ever).

Another valuable lesson I learned was that every single person you meet, and every conversation you have changes and shapes you into the person you are today. You are not the same person today as you were yesterday, and the person you will be tomorrow is different than the person you are today. Embrace new opportunities and take advantage of any time you can talk to someone and soak in the advice they have to share with you. You can always learn something new, and you can literally learn something from everyone no matter how cool you think they are or not.

It's funny because while my friends were off doing touristy things I was going all over the city for meetings at offices and coffee shops and having lunches, etc. I felt like a real New Yorker. I got to experience things and meet so many people. I am so excited to see where those friendships go and what my next adventure will be.

If you want to watch a super cool video of my trip check out this Facebook post (:

Hope you enjoy.

Madison

p.s. Earl Grey tea is my new guilty pleasure and I ate a $25 hamburger in NYC, but it was totally worth it.

Song of the day: Woodland//The Paper Kites