Tuesday, November 25, 2003
With a little bit of regret, I think I have to acknolwedge I've become one of those people for whom "this time of year" is "difficult" or perhaps, more honestly, "depressing."
I used to like Christmas. I have a lot of happy Christmas memories that involve family traditions of watching a regular slew of Christmas specials on TV and video-taping the unwrapping process in the morning and setting the table and so on. I don't particularly like to dwell on them.
Thanksgiving, I have less issues with. At heart, it's a nice concept of a holiday — gather with friends and family to give thanks and eat food and maybe, watch football. It's not commercial or religious and there's no weird tension when you accidentally wish your Jewish friend a happy Thanksgiving. It costs less, causes less stress. And it's just a day, not a season, so maybe my memories of it are just fewer or something. They don't upset me as much. (Or, maybe it's just my dad worked a lot of Thanskgivings, so his presence wasn't always a gaurantee and therefore his absence isn't so notable.)
But the fact remains, this time of year — it's depressing. It's sappy and it's sentimental and it's colder out and you're supposed to have warm fuzzies, but I just focus on the cold part. I don't know why, come December I feel the need to start marking off how long it's been since certain events happened (or, maybe more accurately, didn't). Who's here, who's not. What's gone. What's added and not really wanted.
It just seems cliched. And trite. And it seems to group me with a lot I don't particularly want to be associated with for some reason. Maybe that makes me a snob. I just kind of wouldn't mind being one of those stupid saps who loves this time of year instead of one of those annoying whiners who dreads it.
[11:50 PM EST] [1]
Sunday, November 23, 2003
It was a year ago that my family came to visit to me in London. I took them around town, went up on the London Eye, through the National Gallery, to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral and so on.
Those days, I crossed the Thames to go to class. I shopped around Oxford Circus. I drank in bars in Covent Garden. I went to the theatre, at least once a week. I was annoyed by my flatmates who wouldn't clean the kitchen and not a whole lot else.
Maybe it was something about the disconnect of electronic communication with people in different time zones, but I don't think I ever stopped to really consider what would happen after that. I didn't try to lay it out — just figured I'd be back and know what that was supposed to be like because, well, I've lived here. I know how it works.
Except, really, I didn't.
I haphazardly made arrangements to sublet from a girl I knew who was graduating early — living in a house with people I had met maybe once. I read about the newspaper elections through email, sent to me on list servs I hadn't replied to in months and sighed with something that might have resembled regret, but not really. I almost didn't take on another semester as a reporter, but there was a dress I wanted to buy and I figured Banquet would be a good excuse (I later returned said dress, making life even more ironic).
It's just funny, how life works. How one little twist leads to another, leads you back to where you started, leads you somewhere you had no idea you'd end up. How last night, I stood outside pouring champagne over people in the cold of 2 a.m., wondering what the hell I was doing. It's strange how people turn up, leave, come back again. How somethings just manage to work themselves out. And even if yes, maybe they are a bit fucked up (what's not in my life?), they are probably what I would have wanted, if I'd known enough to know what I'd wanted.
That's both deeply comforting and disturbing — because while maybe it gives me hope that in the end, it'll all turn out, I have these plans in the back of my mind. They're reasonably detailed. They seem feesible, but then, they hinge on things independent of me, so I can't be sure. And I'm afraid they won't really happen.
It's no secret that my constantly-changing address gives me anxiety — I signed a two-year contract on my phone even though I didn't really want to be stuck with Verizon that long because I wanted some sort of stability. My pen hesitates every time I need to put down contact information on a form that someone might not use for several months. There are some things I still haven't unpacked and never will since I've now been living here half the time I will — I can sort of accept it. But I've lived in this state of limbo for a while, and the twists haven't been all bad, and maybe I do want to see where the hell all of this ends up taking me afterall.
[02:45 PM EST] [reply?]
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
So there are only a few days left until, I guess, I get to claim back what's left of my life from this job.
Not that it's really been so long any way — I've only really given up a summer and three months of my fall, which I probably wouldn't have had great uses for anyhow. I know a lot of people have spent a lot more there. But I somehow feel like, well, they wanted that. I did too, sort of. Except I also made a conscious decision to not make it possible to end up there all hours of the night, by taking semesters off, going abroad, and such. And yet, somehow, they got me anyway.
I sound bitter. I shouldn't. In the end, I've probably gotten more out of it than I've given (how much have I really given, afterall?). But I don't know. I get angry about these thing sometimes. I'd be lying if I said I didn't resent it all much of the time.
And then, suddenly, I'll get my life back and even though my reporters seem to look dismayed when I tell them I have no intention of doing anything here next semester (I look forward to the day when nobody can guilt trip me into anything with a phone call), I doubt I'll look back for long.
I know sometimes, I just give up a little — when I admitted the other night I hate breaking news, the managing editor told me I was in the wrong business. I told her I was perfectly aware of that and never had any intention to stay in this business (or even get so far in it in the first place). It sort of felt like the conversation I had with my math teacher senior year of high school, when he told me he wouldn't want to drive over any bridge I built, then paused to ask me what I was majoring in.
"English," I said.
"Oh," he said. "I guess you won't need this Calculus then."
No, I won't. You made me take it, remember?
But I should be sad. I might one day be sad, but honestly, the last time I quit, I didn't really miss it. I mostly was happy to be free. When I was in London, never once did I stop to regret not having bylines or writing experience or whatever.
I don't know why, when I think about how much I really never liked reporting, I feel somehow bitter about journalism. I just do. I feel like I'm sort of selling out when I say I wouldn't mind going into PR because I could write and do all the things I sort of like about journalism without actually having to drag things out of people. It might be sort of slimy, but I don't really mind spinning things.
I still hate it when people ask me what I'm doing next year. I probably will continue to do so until I know for sure, which may not happen until next year is over. The truth is, I really don't know what would make me happy, what I'd really like.
I don't want to go to school because I'm tired of class and I'm tired of reading and writing papers and just generally having to do shit that requires a lot of thought. And I don't want to do journalism because, while I could maybe do it for a year or so, I'd go crazy after a while with all the stress and deadlines. And even if I could make it through a year or two, I'd hate those years.
The things is, I've always been the sort of worker that employees adored. Awful as Vladimir was at TCBY, he loved me for the first year or so (summer after my freshman year at college, he told me it didn't seem like I was trying very hard. I'm not sure what he meant — it's fucking soft serve — but I think he was just bitter that I didn't want to work more hours). Internships, I always turned in a decent amount of work, even if I was never very good at sucking up in annoying, networking sorts of ways. I show up on time, get my stuff done and don't create a lot of problems.
They should so want to hire me.
But I don't know what I want, what would make me happy, or what I'd be even reasonably good at.
Is it wrong that I sort of just want a job at a desk that starts at 9 a.m. (10 would be even nicer) and ends at 5 p.m. (I'll stay 'til 6 if you really need me...)? That I've spent four years at roughly $40 grand a year to aspire to be someone's administrative assistant for $30 grand a year? That I just want to be able to afford a reasonably crappy apartment in a big city with maybe some health insurance to boot?
Maybe I'm just saying these things because it's 5:15 in the morning and I can't sleep and I don't want to go to class or write my paper or stop by the office tomorrow. Maybe being in a horrible mood doesn't do much to motivate me. Maybe I should shut up and just enjoy what's left. But that would probably be too simple.
[05:17 AM EST] [reply?]
Wednesday, November 5, 2003
In the spiring of Halloween and bearing of one's soul (or, at least, All Soul's Day)
I'm afraid that I'm going to wake up one day and everything will fall apart. That the things I think I have and know won't really be there and I'll have to figure it all out again. And then, I'm afraid that some things I spend my time half-hoping are just imaginary won't be. (I know they're real. It still scares me.)
I'm afraid of hurting people I care about. Badly. Without meaning to. Maybe I won't even know it's coming, or maybe it'll just be one of those stupid things I do sometimes when I run head-on into what I know is a very bad idea — where I can watch myself, know better, do it anyway. Or maybe I'll turn out angry and bitter and take it out on the wrong people.
I'm scared of being sick, of writing my paper, of failing my class. Of being broke, paying my bills, of notpaying my bills. I'm scared that sometimes, when I'm driving on the highway, I get this crazy, stupid urge to swerve into the next lane or the gaurdrail and that one day, I might actually do it just to see what fuckin' happens.
I'm still freaked out by the dark sometimes — still, on rare occassions, sleep with my closet light on when I'm home. I don't mind walking home alone at 4 a.m., but I don't like to go downstairs in the middle of the night for a glass of water. Sometimes, the shadows behind my living room blinds creep me out.
I am terrified by failure and even more scared that I'll just never try. I don't want to be average, or boring, or someone who settled. Except, I think the reason I'm so scared of those things is because I can recognize within myself a horrible tendancy to accept those things. To not want to question or confront or deal with the difficult situation.
I'm scared of getting stuck in a small tube with water flowing in. I imagine that if I had a room 101 like in 1984, that is what it would consist of — watching myself drown without even room to kick and wave.
But most of all, I think — I'm afraid I'll never really be loved. Or that I'll be loved, but not appreciated. And left, forgotten, neglected and a footnoted regret in other people's lives: she was probably worth it, but I just never quite could get around to doing what I should...
[05:45 AM EST] [3]