Leo, To Josh: This guy’s walking down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep, he can’t get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, “Hey you, can you help me out?” The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts up “Father, I’m down in this hole, can you help me out?” The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. “Hey Joe, it’s me, can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, “Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.” The friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”

-The West Wing (Noel)

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.

This NaBloPoMo has been far easier than the exercise was in November.

Sure this little foray into dating has given me plenty of material, as has the whining about the job search. The sad thing is, that I have attempted to be mature, to show restraint, and to acknowledge that things are Not That Bad and Could Be Worse.

Yes, I could whine more if I tried.

Another month approaches, and July 1 means 2010 is half over. I won’t even go into the many reasons why this is depressing. In some ways, it surprises me that I fight so hard to not be pessimistic and doom-and-gloom. I used to be famous for my pessimism.

David (brilliant, as usual) summed it up that he and I are both optimists who have been shown the proof of pessimism. Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair. – Thomas Hobbes

Oh Thomas Hobbes, how you slay me.

I still often have this (delusional) belief that things will get better, because they have to. But that is total fucking bullshit. Things don’t have to do anything. The universe is completely random. Sure things could get better. But they could also get worse.

That is where I am supposed to pause, and express gratitude, that things are not as bad as they could be. It is something that I have trained myself to do, having been in rock bottom situations far, far worse than the existential angst of not having the career track I want or the vague self-doubt of not knowing what I did to make a boy reject me.

Yes, I am grateful it is no worse than that. But after months upon months of just getting by on “it could be worse” my passion for that brand of gratitude wanes, and I couldn’t care less about the ways in which things could be worse, because things not being worse hasn’t really gotten me anywhere. I am still in the exact same place I was when things were worse. Maybe my head is a bit more together but the raw statistics are the same.

I wish that I had a more eloquent way to sum up what I’m thinking and to emphasis the muted despair I feel. Because I want no mistake about the fact that my despair is in perspective – my problems are white, middle-class luxury problems, the type I am afforded the privilege of fixating on. Unfortunately, I’m still human and all the rational thought in the world can’t turn me into a robot that remains emotionless on these issues.

George: I don’t want hope. Hope is killing me. My dream is to become hopeless. When you’re hopeless you don’t care. And when you don’t care, that indifference makes you attractive.
Jerry: So hopelessness is the key?
George: It’s my only hope!

This is how I feel about now. My hope dies last in every sense of the word, and it may kill me first. Sorry Andy Duphrane, but right now it’s not fear that’s keeping me prisoner. It’s hope.

I am hoping the mental and physical act of writing this entry will clear my mind and force me to do things today. You see, I think I have unconsciously let the seduction of possibility lapse me into a state of non-action. You see, there’s this job:  this job, that there wasn’t going to be any possibility of me getting for various bureaucratic reasons, but then, miracle of miracles, this job was actually available. And as I almost always do when a job with actual potential, I’ve projected. Even though I have mentally prepared myself for every possible disappointment, my mind has already given two week’s notice and moved into this job’s DC offices.

In reality, this position is likely not going to be filled, period, due to budget constraints, etc. The organization is dragging their feet and I’ve been playing hurry up and wait for nearly two weeks. I should use my time in a more productive manner, obviously.

(Guess how many times I reloaded my email in between writing those two paragraphs)

Also, I have sent into the universe, an invitation for coffee, with an actual day. Not just a “we should have coffee sometime.” Well, that’s how it started, but perhaps it’s the hurry up and wait of the job hunt, or perhaps it’s just my advanced age, but I have no patience to play a game, and so I asked him to coffee on Sunday, and said “suggest another date if that’s no good.” This likely breaks more than one unwritten rule, and makes me too available, but I am so sick of games, and this isn’t even a date.

And, because I am incapable of not talking about my job search for more than 5 minutes: going back to what I said in the first paragraph, I need to force myself to do things today. There are literally ten jobs for which I am qualified enough to put applications into.  Ten! That’s a lot in this lousy economy. I need to just do it. I need to pretend this other alluring opportunity doesn’t exist. Because at this point in the process, it almost doesn’t.

It’s just that it would be so much easier if this job were to work out. But nobody said this would be easy. (I am obligated to add “no one ever said it would be this hard” even though 1) I am not a Coldplay fan. 2) They weren’t talking about job hunting. 3) It’s not 2003.)

I was super irritated for no real reason (other then the lack of ice cream in the freezer) last night. I gave up fighting it and went to bed at 10 PM.  Now I am drinking tea, wishing it were coffee, wishing it were Irish coffee. I do not like this time of year.

Yet another thing that is fantastic about my old friends. Joe & I went to the diner on Saturday afternoon. First of all, it was monsoon-ing, but out of respect for my umbrella hate he did not carry an umbrella. Which is sensible, I think, considering we were just going from the car to the diner, which was maybe 50 feet. And ok, he confessed that the REAL reason he didn’t carry the umbrella is because he knew I would refuse to use it, and then he would look like the jerk, walking with the umbrella, and letting the girl get soaked.

Anyway, I confessed to him that besides the Bon Jovi kick that I have been on as of late, I cannot stop listening to my Taylor Swift CD. He of course, rolled his eyes at me, and mockingly asked “What’s your favorite song?”

“I’m not telling you!”

He thought about it for about 15 seconds, and then said “It’s ‘You Belong With Me’ isn’t it? That it so like you”

He’s almost right. Not my favorite on the CD, but there have been times when I’m singing along with it in my car and wishing I was 14 because then the song would have been oh-so-relevant to my life.

(My favorite Taylor Swift song, for the record is “Change.” Because this things will change.)

I love that he knows me well enough to state my Taylor Swift song preferences so emphatiaclly.

Now, in case that left any doubt over whether I am in fact, a “total girl” I will confess that the only thing restraining me from buying shoes (at omg, 25% off) right now is because shipping takes too long and I am into instant gratification. However, what may moderate my utter girliness is the fact that I HATE shoe shopping. HATE it. Hate that you have to find a salesperson and ask them to get your size. And so really, buying shoes online IS the most logical choice. Also I am wearing black pants, black shoes and white socks right now. That is terribly unfashionable and thus not very girly.

And now this entry comes full circle, because I’m irritated again. I don’t mind answering questions at work; I don’t even mind questions that are not my job to answer. I’m Little-Miss-Knows-Everything when it comes to operational, budget  and administrative issues here.  But I HATE when a co-workers asks for the same piece of (very simple) information over and over again. WRITE IT DOWN.

And no, I am not PMS-ing. I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to be irritated about. (Insert smile-y face here)

Confession: I pretty much HATE youtube.

So I’ve been on a big Bon Jovi kick lately. Not classic Bon Jovi. Post-”Crush” Bon Jovi, which is cheesy in a completely different way than his more famous ballads. I was driving around aimlessly on Sunday, and I discovered the song “One Step Closer,” which, when I’m in a good mood (as I was on Sunday) I think is apt for the way I have handled the past year. It’s a pretty little song.

I thought maybe I should apologize for over identification with the lyrics of a Bon Jovi song, but then I decided that I’m not sorry. In fact, I went through a period where I could not even listen to happy/positive music because I was so depressed that it would depress me further, simply because I couldn’t identify with the words and knew it.

Now, most people would link you to a YouTube video instead of just the lyrics. But I hate YouTube. I have no patience for it. If you send me a link to a video 99.9% of the time, I won’t click. Don’t take it personally; I also hate it when top stories on CNN et al. are VIDEOS.  I do not want to hear someone talk about the news item in question; I want to READ about it. 

I realize this is a pretty old-fashioned attitude, akin to complaining about those kids and their text messaging. Yes, I know that beyond the stupid content at YouTube, there’s probably a lot of good stuff too. I just don’t have the patience to wade ande I dont have the patience to wait for your link to load. Sorry.

In other news; I lost the “receipt” from the car I bought last year. You know, the thing you get at the dealership that breaks down the cost and the exact amount of tax. Which is a number I need for my taxes. I called the dealership already, who told me to go the bank that financed my loan. Now, I HAVE that information, but even with the breakdown of registration fee, etc, my calculations still come out wrong. Realistically, the most I’ll be off on an estimate of the tax I paid on the car is like $20, but the IRS makes me paranoid.

This is completely typical of me. I lose important pieces of paper because I have almost everything online and therefore to not save phyiscal copies of credit card/bank statements, etc. But the piece of paper, that this boy wrote me a note on in college? That I have.

I made plans to go to a Monday meeting, with the intent of “running into” Just-In-Case. Partly because when I actually ran into him a few weeks ago, he told me I should. In anticipation of this (and also, just because I felt like it) I fixed my hair and dressed all nice. I wore this shirt, because Keithers described the color (Fantasia Blue) as “I want to have sex with that.” I recieved several compliments.

Just-In-Case, was of course, not there this Monday. Typical. At least my hair still looks pretty today.

The days are dragging this week. I feel like Toni Collette in Clockwatchers, which is a wonderful and very underrated little film. The movie was made in 1997, so while the internet existed (we had it at my house. My family had internet before Al Gore, probably) it certainly hadn’t infiltrated every aspect of the workplace like it does today. There’s one line in it

Sometimes it hits you how quickly the present fades into the past, and you question everything around you. You wonder if anything you’d ever do would matter.

Which pretty much sums up what I feel some days. I was driving to work this morning and it’s already almost March. 2009 was the year of Just Surviving. Last March, I said that I knew it was going to be hard, that “this year” was going to be really, really, really hard but that I would get through it. And now I have, and it’s like “ok, what next?” and while I clearly have some ideas of what I want for “what’s next,” the present is speeding away as I try to make the future happen.

This is quickly veering towards angsty-existential crises territory, where it seems to go a lot these days. I think back on when I was temping, at this time, five years ago. Sure I’m older and wiser, but I am so jealous of my 22 year old self sometimes. And then I remember what it was like trying to get a job just out of college, practically having to beg someone to give me a chance, and well no, I’m not jealous of that, but then again, is it really that different from what I’m doing now? That I’m offering to answer phones and make copies for an abysmal salary just so I can finally work somewhere that I feel relevant?

That was a major run on sentence.

I guess part of it is that deep down there is still this fear, that maybe This Is It. That all I am ever going to be is a glorified secretary. And while that’s not the worst of fates (or pays) it’s certainly not what I ever wanted or imagined for myself. Maybe I just Don’t Have What It Takes. To do what, exactly, I’m not sure, but for now I use the sentiment broadly. It seems entirely possible that it isn’t going to matter how many carefully crafted cover letters I send out or how smart I am, or how capable I am of doing any of these jobs; I might never get one because of all that is still missing from my resume. And maybe, it’s missing from my resume, not because I choose wrong or differently, but because I am just not the type of person who saw those chances, or opportunities in the first place. David is always pointed out that every ponderance of “what would have been if I had taken another path” requires you to question whether you, being the type of person you are, could have done anything different anyway.

This started out as a lighthearted post. I swear.

It’s funny how doubt hides itself. It follows behind you. It waits in every corner. You never see it coming. But you feel it, on the inside. Maybe it was just that office. Or maybe it was bigger than that, it was all around. A million eyes. Watching. Judging. The whole wide world even. You feel so small.

-Clockwatchers

My apologies to Kim, but I got in my car to make my second trip to the Fed-Ex store, and “Tear Drops On My Guitar” came on. I went to change the song (because yes, it’s on a Mix CD that I made) and then pulled my hand back, because it was almost ridiculously appropriate for the news I had just gotten.

I have a friend named Drew, who I will ocacsionally sing the first bars of this song to in order to annoy him (the song, for those not in the Taylor Swift know, is about her friend Drew, who she is in love with, who is in love with another girl. It’s classic high school stuff). But, for a very, very brief period, there was another Drew in my life, except it was spelt “Dru.”

It was a drawn out flirtation carried out via email, IMs and texts. It culminated in finally meeting at the disaster that was Chicago trip in the Summer of 2008.

I didn’t even like him that much, but I liked the idea of him. And at the time, I liked that he paid way more attention to me than O-L-B did. To be honest, I wasn’t attracted to him, but alcohol fixed that temporarily. And since then, he’s really fallen in my estimation. I find many of the things he says ridiculous, if not downright despicable. I was an apologist for him for many, many months after the disaster of Chicago, but there came a point when I realized there was nothing worth defending.  There is literally nothing about him that I find attractive or desirable. The only reason he was ever a big deal is because of the way in which I tricked myself into thinking we had all this potential. In retrospect, it was an obvious means of distracting myself, but at the time, the loss of that potential seemed horrible. It’s funny. You always hear the expression “I don’t know what I ever saw in him” and I’ve always thought that that expression was insincere, the defensive words of a wronged woman.

But really: I don’t know what I ever saw in him. I forced myself to see things there, and then I made him respond to me. It was never that I liked him, it was that I had to make him like me. 

He just announced today that he’s engaged. And for whatever reason, that felt weird, just for a second.

And while I sang along with the song without the least bit of sincerity, I still thought of that Dru, just this one time.

Bon Jovi has been the talk of morning show of 95.5, because he’s just come out with a new CD and when Giant Stadium re-opens, he will play the first show. I’ve had his song “The Distance” in my head on and off. I have no idea why – it’s not one of his well known song, it’s off of “Bounce” which is neither critically or fan acclaimed. That CD came out October of my Sophomore year of college. I was in Saratoga, having transferred to Skidmore. That song puts me in the car on Route 50 in Wilton on the way back to campus.

Basically the only time I listen to music is when I’m driving, or if I’m in the city, on the subway. I haven’t driven since March and so I’ve listened to even less music then usual this year. I don’t have a “Soundtrack” to remind me of these long, long months but I also don’t have any events that needed music as a background. I used to write Soundtracks at the end of the year. I don’t think I’ve written one since 2006.

It’s a Saturday morning and I’m sitting half in my pajamas, listening to music that reminds me of a period in my life that I thought was unhappy at the time, but would go back to, given the chance. And ironically (and I know this a misuse of ironic, but I can’t think of any other way to put it) during the period of my life, when Bounce came out, I was fervently wishing to be back in a time two years before that.

And. (And) The title of the new Bon Jovi CD is “The Circle.” As in, this entry, (and my life) have come full circle. I am being faceticious and it somewhat amuses me that I can even manage to think like such a teenager, but, at the end of the entry, I AM thinking like at teenager.

But I just wrote a thematic Bon Jovi entry. How Jersey is that?

Between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.
-Under the Tuscan Sun

“Look if you want, but you will have to leap”
-Auden, by way of Rome

Two songs stuck in my head for almost a week now:

Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own: U2
-a shame I never really listened to the song years ago when the phrase “I don’t need to hear you say, if we weren’t so alike, you’d like me a whole lot more.” would have been scary-relevant

and
I Wonder Why: Curtis Stigers
I have not heard this song in years, but it was around this time four years ago that I was listening to it a lot. Hooray for deja vu!

“I’ve kept a journal, on and off, for about 6 years now. In those notebooks I was wholly uncensored. I never intended for anyone else to read them. This notebook is addressed to you, and written with your eyes in mind. And though I repeatedly strove for the same level of candor how was that possible when I knew all along that you were going to read it? Writing for an audience turns in into a form of performance art no matter ho guileless I claim — or even strive — to be. Can there ven be such a thing as an unmediated experience theses days? Every storyteller is biased, sure, and we both know I’ve been a bit of a show off for you (you want my stories? I’l give you some stories, buddy!) I didn’t try to create the illusion I’m a better or more compassionate person…”

-Forthcomings

I’m still cat-sitting for Chris & Zena, and their apartment has air conditioning and a DVD collection that is just my type. So I’m wasting time here till I have to go over to Em’s and take care of her cat. And so I just watched Saved! and cried my eyes out. This would be acceptable if it were late night and I were drunk, but instead its like 10 in the morning and I am hanging out at my friends apartment and cannot keep myself from bawling over a stupid movie.

Em’s cat is overly affectionate and the cat here is excessively bitchy. I had my brother with me on Wednesday, and the cat was horrid to him. So I might take a nap here and then travel over to Emily’s place. But Chris and Zena are the best people ever for allowing me the most perfect Saturday morning ever. I love hanging out with Xavier, we get along apparently.

Dawson: Can I have some advice?
Joey: Sure, what else are dumped ex-girlfriends for?

I related this to the Ex when he called me for advice, although he reminded me that I am the bitch who dumped him.

Wilson, to House: you don’t love yourself but you admire yourself, its all you got and so you cling to that, because you’re afraid if you change, you’ll lose that. being miserable doesn’t make you better than anyone else. it just makes you miserable

This reminds me of someone I know.

For one, I am a relatlvely defensive person. 

I also have a mix on iTunes entitled “You ruined this one for me.” Which is basically songs that I can’t listen to, because they remind me of exes. Thank god Billy Joel remains immune, save two songs. But also, my memory kills me. Like I’ll cue up a song and it brings up such intensely palpitable memories that I want to hit something. Strangely there are fewer songs that remind me of the ex-ex-ex than HeWhoShallNotBeNamed. I think Laura teased me once I had like, a soundtrack for that relationship. And um, i kind of did.

I am listening to an NSYNC song right now. I am wholly unashamed of this. Rome and I used to walk around the West Village singing Britney Spears. 

I am dealing with “issues.” Which is my purposelly vague way of saying “Wow. There’s a lot of nonsense from ages ago that I never dealt with. I’m going to go deal with it! Which is probably quite annoying for anyone who has to deal with me on a daily basis. This post sounds fairly emo and so I will conclude on the note that I recognize my ridiculousness.

After several days of abject panic, my Ipod shuffle cued up “Vienna” while I was was walking to campus yesterday morning. Which is one big scary-relevant-lyric of excellent advice. I do have a habit of being so ahead of myself that I forget what I need.

Sometimes, I have to remind myself that at the end of this program, I am going to be twenty-four years old, with an MA from the University of Chicago, and another full year’s experience at a research assistant. And that’s really damn good.

And my professor from last quarter, who is one of the most prominent experts on Carl Schmitt in the entire world of academia, is looking at my thesis proposal this week, and will most likely be my advisor. He said my proposed thesis is “provacative.” That is also really damn good.

And, so long as I can keep on task, I will finish in June, instead of August. Graduation date is about six months from today. That is also really damn good.

On Grad School:

And I ain’t in it for the power
And I ain’t in it for my health
I ain’t in it for the glory of anything at all
And I sure ain’t in it for the wealth
But I’m in it till it’s over
And I just can’t stop