I turned on my car leaving work yesterday, and the Jimmy Eat World song “The Middle” was just starting on the radio.

This song reminds me of driving out of the parking lot of Bergen Community College. This song was always playing when I got out of the Italian class I was taking there the Summer of 2002. 95.5 doesn’t have a very creative rotation, so if you listen to it regularly, you start to notice they play the same songs at the same time everyday. I always thought it was oh-so-appropriate; I had just finished my first (hellish, awful, miserable) year of college at Hampshire, and would be starting at Skidmore in the fall. So I was quite literally, in the middle. So I always thought of that song as my “transferring song.” Years later, I found out that Xina did too.

Anyway, as more proof that my hope dies last, I hear that song, and there is still a tiny part of me that considers it a sign from the universe that I should keep my chin up and keep pushing through, because it will get better. And yes, I’m taking the words of a pop song from 2002 as a message

Today is also July 1st. Half way through 2010. The middle.

I wish I could be the type of blogger that writes, without a trace of irony that “if that isn’t a sign from the universe, I don’t know what is,” (actually, it’s a good thing I’m not that type of blogger, because then Charlotte probably wouldn’t like me, and I wouldn’t have nearly as much of an excuse to go to London next year) but I will try to appreciate the coincidence. I’m trying hard not the think about the 182 days that have already passed, and the waste they have been. So many cliches have been floating through my brain on the subject (“Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans”) and trying not to obsess about the way I see the months and years of my life slip away as I attempt to put myself on track. I’m trying to think it’s okay that I don’t have a precise answer on what I want to do (because there are multiple paths that I’m trying to go, and I won’t know if any of them make me happy until I try them).

Yesterday, I quoted Thomas Hobbes, and to balance of the vapidness of quoting Jimmy Eat World, I will quote Churchill (via Charlotte) “If you are going through hell, keep going.”

So I have two job applications to submit today. I appear to be categorically incapable of not hoping.