I don’t mean to go on blogging breaks, but work has been insane, and then, what do I have to say, really? I am still stuck. Oh, and it’s Saturday night, and I have no plans besides picking up some sushi, doing some laundry, and the SVU marathon.

I have basically become ok with the fact that my weekends are like this. I have gotten past judging them as “pathetic” and making self deprecating comments about them. I would just rather be spending my weekends doing nothing in DC (or NYC) and then I would have the option to do something that wasn’t nothing.

I think I might want DC like the way I wanted New York when I got out of college. Back then, I was also craving independence and the opportunity for a social life, to be sure, but I wanted New York because of HWSNBN. I think I want DC, and there’s not even a boy there. I suppose my therapist would say this is progress. Of course, it’s entirely possible that I have just forced myself to not want NYC, because I know that career wise, DC is the only place that makes sense right now. And, given that, there’s no use wanting what you can’t have, or torturing yourself with what cannot be.

HWSNBN still texts me very occasionally. He asked back in September when I’d be in the city next. I said December. He told me to let him know when, but I never did. I didn’t see the point, really, and also all the vain, shallow reasons like I want to be nothing but 100% together if I ever see him again.

So for now, I’m not quite sure what I’m doing. I have a phone interview on Monday for an organization that pays probably half of what my current job does, and who’s political orientation is possibly opposite of my own. Still, they do some interesting work in the security/foreign policy realm, so I’ll give it a chance to see what happens. Already, in my head I’m making excuses for why this is a terrible idea to even consider, and of course this is mere projection, because the phone interview hasn’t even happened yet.

When I moved to New York, I was actually pretty gutsy. Despite growing up 30 minutes away, I didn’t know the city, and I certainly didn’t know the boroughs. I spent the first half of the summer of 2005 job hunting and apartment hunting in the sweltering heat. I learned the neighborhoods of Brooklyn (where I never wound up living) by google map directions and walking. I learned the subway by following the colored lines on the map with my finger. HWSNBN and I were long over, and I didn’t have any friends in the city. I just did it.

“You have to take a step before you’re ready. Because if you wait to be ready, you’ll never take that step. “

Perhaps I would do well to remember this.

Every year I’ve given thanks for “The 365 changes to start over on the right foot.” I usually referenced the same around New Year’s. I started doing this in 2004, when the dumbest thing I was doing was the occasional drunk dial to HWSNBN.

In 2007 and 2008 I did a number of things that I wish I could forget, culminating with the stupidest of them in March of 2009. If it weren’t for the change to alleged chance to start over everyday, I don’t know how many times I would have made it out of bed.

I have indulged in a great deal of self-sabotage. I kept setting myself back. That is why, for the past year plus my only plan was to not have a plan. Given my obsessing over the Libertarian Fellowship, I may have finally felt it’s safe to start planning again. Without getting too far ahead of myself, even if I don’t get the Libertarian Fellowship, there are other things I plan to go for. Of course, that is easy for me to say right now – I will be devastated if I don’t get it.

But anyway.

I am grateful for all the obvious things – my parents who didn’t kick my sorry, stupid self to the curb and my friends for not judging and being supportive even when I was not someone who deserved it.

I am kind of jealous of the people heading back to or starting school today. I love the start of a school year; new clothes, school supplies, and Promise.

Read the rest of this entry »

Four years ago, I wrote: ”These artificial divisions of time turn into benchmarks, ways to measure your life, as you can’t help but turn back and think about what you were doing four years ago today, and what’s changed since then, and what you’ve done in the interim”

I think I stole that from somewhere, but I have no clue where.

Anyway, four years ago, I was still hopelessly, completely enamored with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (and I was in denial) I was doing NaNo for the first time, and went on a date with a guy I met at the Albany region gathering. His name was Rob and I convinced him to read Atlas Shrugged. I was less than two months away from graduating college and full of schemes and plans that changed weekly.

On election night, I sat in my room in Fain C, yelling election news back and forth with my housemates. I never though Bush was going to lose, so there was no disappointment. Despite the sorry state of affairs I did not believe Bush could be defeated, and I certainly did not think Kerry would be the man to defeat him. I guess that’s why I wasn’t really upset that Bush one, because Kerry really did not seem like any type of improvement.

This year, I won’t like: I will cry if McCain wins. Not only can I not stand him, and the campaign that he run, but like most women (people?) I can’t stand Sarah Palin. I do not want either of them any where near the executive office.

I said it around the DNC that the change Obama wants me to believe in, is not my brand of change, neccesarily. But it is certainly better than the alternative. I also have a lot of respect for the campaign he ran. I started to notice it in the primaries — I think it was in the third debate he had with HIllary — she was going after him with character attacks, and getting angrier and angrier, and he just DID NOT engage her. I thought that was pretty awesome.

Four years ago feels like a lifetime ago. I have talked about this election for four years; it felt very strange to finally vote today. In a little over 12 hours, we should know for sure.

Libertarians for Obama!

I’m happy to report the revival of my cellphone!

And I’m reposting this, because it needs to be said again, even though I only posted it a month ago.

Read the rest of this entry »

So Internet is completely down at work, leaving me with NOTHING to do. I’m effectively so bored that time is standing still.

But it’s funny; I would do nearly anything to be able to stop time this summer; there have been so many right nows, todays, right this seconds. There has been quiet contentment and uproarious laughter, and it’s all so lovely, I want to hold on to it, and stand in the light as long as possible.

It’s like this: now is the most contented and comfortable in my own skin I think I’ve ever been.

I am not racked with anxiety. I am not crying spontaneously, or without reason. I am not struggling (Boo to thee who say you cannot do NYC on a budget.) I am not longing. I am not unhappy. You may say this is a lot of “nots” – what are you, anyway? — but I tell you this list of negatives is incredibly significant and positive, despite it defining me in negative space.

So I sit here, in this little den I’ve created of comfort and stability, and I look ahead. I see the weekend; an outing to Culture Club with the girls, going to Coney Island with Jill & Drew, another Sunday in Astoria. I see next week, another set of Astoria-centric outings.

I see the next month of cramming in last minutes and last moments. I see a list of plans and people to see. I see good-byes that I’m refusing to think about right now. I see a life that it full of…well, life.

And then, that’s it, I look ahead, and there is leaving this den. There is packing up my apartment. There is driving to Chicago. There is starting school. There is a life that is just plain different from the one I’m living right this second.

And while it is scary, I am not paralyzed. I’m excited about the new things life will bring in the next year, even if some of them will bring some pain, too.

At first I was scared stiff by the thought of my life changing rhythms. Did you know I burst into tears when I found out I got into U Chicago and insisted I didn’t want to go? I didn’t want to leave the cacoon of comfort New York was becoming. It was at the corner of one phrase and another, a final push to learn to let go.

Now I’m generally sunny with occaisonal bouts of doubt. Only occaisonal ones, that stay for a beat and then move on.

So, you see, I think I know how this works. Change is good. My mind knows this now. And I am not collapsing into fits of anxiety, and I am not succumbing to fear. I am embracing change and looking forward to it.

I just wish time would tick by a bit more slowly this summer, that’s all. I wish these long hot days of summer would become just a tiny bit slower. I wish it would all stop flying by so fast.

And so the internet goes back up, and there is distraction and things to procrastinate my assigned data entry again. But that hour ticked by, no joke. So maybe someone is making time go by a little slower for me. Maybe.