And then also; May is going to suck. So much is going on at work. I’ll make some money from overtime, but I also haven’t applied to one job this week and the whole month of May is looking to be the same type of frentic pace. And also; it’s already May.

Last night, in one of my half written drafts, I started to think about a May, a ten years ago May, a May that was dreaded and referred to only in hushed tones, but that, when it arrived, my utter impatience had already forced the issues and dealt with the fallout, which softened the blow and it was anti-climatic. I think of six years ago May, which was eerily the same, in which I viewed more sunrises than in the rest of my life combined and drank black coffee at 2 in the morning. Four years ago May was about silence and quiet regrouping and the beginning of the best of times. Two years ago May was bold faced lies to myself and everyone around me as I pretended to get well.

While one year ago May was just about survival, this May was supposed to be about another beginning. I warned Keithers that I might not have a job by May, that the job market was tough, but really, I’m pretty sure that a part of me was sure I’d have a job in DC by now. In February, May always seems far away and like a time when things will be different.

This May is about false hopes and real, but vague longing and trying not to get depressed about my 27th birthday. May reminds me of New York and makes me desperately miss lunch breaks in Midtown and the way the city shimmers at 9PM on a Thursday and it makes me ask “DC who?” This May is weekends at work, for overtime pay to stash away for a financially secure exit to who the hell knows where, and brings the reminder that I’m not going anywhere this summer except back and forth on the oh-so-familiar curves of Route 287.

April is allegedly the cruelest month, but I can’t find a one word way to sum up May. I just want to get through these thirty-one days. Starting the countdown from today.

]]> http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2010/04/30/thirty-two-days/feed/ 1 http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2010/04/04/reserved/ http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2010/04/04/reserved/#comments Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:30:27 +0000 Rachel Not Rebecca http://rachelnotrebecca.com/?p=6672 May 30, 2005: Tomorrow begins my insane job interview schedule.  And that is all I have to say. When I get in this, forgive the term, mindset, I’m too busy acting to think.

And with that I took a few weeks off of LJ for The Great NYC Job and Apartment search. I found the apartment first, in late June, and then HWSNBN ended things officially, and I kept going on interviw after interview (mostly with temp agencies) for lousy receptionist and administrative positions, mostly at finance places. One place blended in to the next. I didn’t write about it and an interview in and of itself was nothing to mention, because I had scads of them, 99%of which I walked out of knowing that there was no chance of getting the job.

I don’t want to write about job hunting anymore. I don’t want to write about my frustrations, and my moments of hope and plans that may or may not be foiled by circumstances out of my control.

Right now, I’m pretty resigned. I’m pretty much Here for the long-haul. I’m going to stop wasting my time with federal job applications, because right now I don’t have the time or energy to put into crafting the time of answers you need to get your application looked at. When I’m unemployed, with nothing but time, then I’ll dedicate the hours each one of those takes.

Right now, I’m kind of ok with that. I’ll focus my attention on the good things about Jersey. I’ll enjoy the last few months of Joe being around before he heads off the California. I’ll participate in our efforts to rally for another friend. I’ll go to the CFL meeting tomorrow night (maybe…it’s all the way at the eastern edge of the county, which is about as far away from my house as you can get, plus I’d be coming from work.)

I reserve the right to write an entry completely the opposite of this one any time in the next 24 hours to 30 days, because as a woman, I reserve the right to change my mind, and as I mildly angsty almost late-20s something, I reserve the right to turn everything into an existential crises.

Holden Caulfield is the character every angsty teenage boy wants to be and every lonely teenager girl wants to date. Jonathan Yardley refers to the novel in which he stars as “an essential document of American adolescence – the novel that every high school English teacher reflexively puts on every summer reading list.” Aware of its reputation, I was eager to read Catching in the Rye when it was assigned to my sophomore English class. As a sarcastic, know-it-all fifteen year old I couldn’t wait to see Holden stylishly denounce the phonies. I expected Salinger’s novel to give insight into the mind of a wise beyond his years boy, and explain to the world of popular teenagers – the world I despised – what it was like to feel misunderstood and lonely.

Yet, as I slogged through Salinger’s mawkish prose, I had a difficult time figuring out what all the excitement was about. Despite having been told innumerable times that I would identify with Holden, I couldn’t help disliking him. He was quick to label people phonies, but he lied constantly, especially to himself. I became impatient with his poor treatment of everyone he encountered. When I reached the end I was disappointed and uninspired. But, everyone else in my English class loved it – and it is a rarity in high school for students to enjoy the assigned reading. I was convinced I must have been missing something.  Certainly, there must be something to Holden besides his whining and inability to take responsibility for his own actions. Maybe there was something that justified his behavior.

I listened to the class discussion in which student after student expressed how “cool” Holden was. They felt sorry for him; he was so sad! They admired the way he cursed humanity and dismissed those around him as phonies. It’s great they said, to have a character who comes out and “tells it like it is.” I kept quiet. Maybe I was wrong to think Holden was a phony. Everyone else seemed to have sympathy for him, and some were even excited that they had finally found a character who expressed how they felt. I must have been missing something. So I answered the assigned study questions, wrote what I identified with in the text and moved on.

A year later I met a boy who proudly declared that he was exactly like Holden Caulfield. “I’m writing my junior English paper on Salinger,” he informed me excitedly. “Don’t you just love Catcher in the Rye?” I was trying to get a date there, so I smiled, nodded, and within a few weeks, I was his girlfriend. The next year, Catcher in the Rye was listed in my senior yearbook as one of “Our Top Three Favorite Books.” I never admitted that I, the girl voted most sarcastic by the senior class, could not identify with the quintessential character of cynicism. It seemed that I should like Holden. I had certainly spent a good portion of high school as misanthropic outsider. I had a bad habit of judgmentally dismissing the seemingly superficial behavior of my peers. Besides, there must be something wrong with me if I couldn’t muster up sympathy for a poor guy who was just trying to deal with his brother’s death.  Why didn’t I like Holden? I had wanted to like Catcher in the Rye. Holden and I both had a lot of angst, so why didn’t I hit it off with him? It seemed everyone else had. The novel that was supposed to speak to my typical teenage insecurity had the effect of making me very insecure in my unpopular opinion.

David Rachels writes that high school English is indoctrination, that encourages independent thinking by “letting students explain why he or she accepted someone else’s view on the subject.” Instead of debating whether Holden is a good human being, it is already accepted that he is the victim of circumstances. He is universally seen as hardened to the world; sad and broken. Thus his behavior is accepted, excused, and admired.  He’s seen as heroic for the way he rails against the world and honestly assesses humanity. He’s labeled tragic for being punished by a world that can’t possibly understand him. It is demanded that one sympathize with his plight; to think otherwise about Holden would be insensitive. The only choice that was placed before my sophomore honors English class was whether Holden was a static or dynamic character. Is he able to recover from his depression? Or is he still in the same state he was at the beginning of the book? Acceptance of Holden as a tragic hero is a foregone conclusion. Questions about whether we even liked Holden were never raised. It was already assumed that every high school sophomore would be eager to sing his praises.

Holden isn’t necessarily a horrible person. He’s a seventeen year old who made some bad decisions and isn’t happy with his life.  Everyone has felt alone and misunderstood, and seen their circumstances as unfair. It’s practically a requirement of adolescence to occasionally hate the world around you. But one of the lessons one learns again and again is that you have to take responsibility for your actions. Holden never does this. Students seem to admire that, after being kicked out of school, Holden fearlessly roams New York City, having adventure after adventure. Everyone skips over the fact that Holden was kicked out of school for a reason – it was his fault and it seems he was given a number of second chances. He didn’t take them. Holden chooses not to take advantage of the opportunities bestowed upon him, and then he blames the school, the world, and those “damn phonies.” After page upon page of unsubstantiated whining, I couldn’t trust Holden’s view of the world.

Holden, like a lot of teenagers, thinks that everyone is out to get him. He’s not a very nice person. He’s selfish. He’s whiny. He’s a typical teenager who thinks he knows everything and needs to grow up. Jonathan Yardley writers that Salinger’s mediocre novel is “required reading as therapy, a way to encourage young people to bathe in the warm, soothing waters of resentment (all grown-ups are phonies) and self-pity without having to think a lucid thought.” Many of us are embarrassed by an honest look back at our adolescence because we all acted like immature brats at some point, and must often sheepishly admit that our parents might have been right about a couple of things. Thus, the admiration teenagers have for Holden seems misplaced. No one should aspire to stay seventeen forever.

Salinger’s novel appeals to the insecurity many teenagers are overwhelmed by and makes them proud of their whiny rebellion. Holden has been canonized as the patron saint of adolescent angst by kids who admire him because he’s “just like them..”  Unfortunately, no one ever stops to ask if this was a good thing. It is only now, high school four years behind me, that I can say that I wasn’t missing anything back in sophomore honors English.  Hopefully all the boys who declare themselves the Holden Caulfield of their high school grow out of it and all the girls who want to date a Holden Caulfield realize that they’d be better off with someone who isn’t so callow. I still have a lot of growing up to do, but I like to think I’m past the stage of blaming the world for any misfortune I encounter. The world according to Holden is an unfair place, and he is unwilling to accept that. Growing up means accepting the world isn’t always fair. And that quite often, you’ll have to deal with phonies like Holden.

]]> http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2010/01/30/coming-out-against-catcher/feed/ 3 http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/12/30/every-year%e2%80%99s-a-souvenir/ http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/12/30/every-year%e2%80%99s-a-souvenir/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:17:00 +0000 Rachel Not Rebecca http://rachelnotrebecca.com/?p=6494 Oh Billy Joel, how I miss being able to listen to your music. Otherwise, I’d actually have “Souvenir” on my iPod. But after the embarrassingly awful alcohol poisoning incident in 2008, which landed me in the hospital and caused my acquientence to miss the entirity on Last Play At Shea, I have been unable to listen to you without cringing. This is a shame, because you play in the background of so many of the scenes of the first half of my decade. Luckily, Dar Williams sort of takes over at a point.

Anyway, to complete the chorus “Every Year’s A Souvenir/That Slowly Fades Away”

Here are ten of them.

In the first minutes of 2000 I was kissing The Ex on the street outside an acquaintances house. I was in love. I would fight harder for him than I have fought for anyone since. Richie was still my best friend, though later in the year, a betrayal of trust and my own stubbornness would destroy our closeness. I lost my virginity that summer. My best female friend was Marianne, and while we were close the rest of high school, I haven’t talked to her since then.

In 2001, I was still in love. Academic decathlon was the center of my universe though, and it was worth it, because I got to go to Alaska with all my best friends – the guys on the team – Brent (my Best Friend), Jon, and Joe. I was confident, in that naively arrogant way you can only be as a senior in high school. In September, I headed to Hampshire College, which I would hate from the first day. I would spend the next months (and years, really) visiting The Ex on weekends.

Much of 2002 made no sense. I transferred to Skidmore. I met HWSNBN and humiliated myself almost immediately with my crush (and I was still with The Ex. There was some denial going on.) I also hurt my Best Friend very badly because I was selfish and stupid. After a few drunken emails, he kept me around, and pretended it had never happened.

In 2003, I was a self-righteous bitch most of the time. I was pretty horrible to my roommate Steph, and I still feel bad about it. I went to Italy for 6 weeks and made two friends who I haven’t seen since (one of them, Aubrey, I haven’t talked to since. I just found her through google, and think about emailing her). I crushed heavily on HWSNBN. I joined the Young Republicans Club as the token libertarian. I was an overachieving government major.

2004 began with me aching for change and not quite knowing it. I listened to the BNL song “War on Drugs” over and over that January. I went to Amsterdam for Model EU and I met this boy and we made out on a beach at the Bungalow Park in the freezing cold, and we talked and talked, and I got a glimpse of what I could be like, if I could just remember how to be myself. I came back home and went back to Skidmore for the spring semester, and HWSNBN was suddenly giving me these looks all the time. One night, I went out with him and a few other people and our professor, and afterwards, he came over to my house and we were sitting on the couch downstairs and he looked at me and said “You’re beautiful” and we kissed and I know it sounds pathetic, but that is still one of my top ten moments ever. I dumped The Ex the next day. I didn’t dump him for HWSNBN – it was time to break up anyway. The rest of 2004 was drama with HWSNBN. He broke my heart. I was very, very sad for a very long time. At the very end of 2004 (and the end of my college career) things did start to look up. 2004 was a very educational year.

2005 - I spent the first moments of 2005 in tears, over HWSNBN, who I was supposed to have been kissing, but things don’t go as planned. I quit B&N (finally) to temp for $15 an hour which seemed like a fortune at the time. I moved to Jersey City and started working at PLI, the place that would change my life. I made so many friends there. I briefly got involved with a guy I knew was all wrong for me. It was icky

2006 – I moved to Astoria and it was the best decision ever. Between Astoria and PLI, and Meet-up, I had gobs of friends everywhere. I went out all the time. I laughed all the time. I started hanging out with Jill-IAN and Drucifer. I started talking to The Ex again, and that summer we formed an overly close, inappropriate friendship via phone. I went off to University of Chicago at the end of the greatest summer of my life, and I was popular enough to warrant two good-bye parties. U Chicago wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t like my advisor. I drank too much. The Ex found himself a girlfriend, and while it didn’t break my heart, it came pretty close.

2007- is a blur, filled with self-destructiveness. I broke my Best Friend’s heart, the same one who forgave me for the same crime in 2002. I drank way, way too much. I hurt my parents with my self-destructive behavior. Somewhere in there I managed to write an MA thesis, graduate (in less than 9 months) move back to NYC, get the Job-That-Wasn’t, get the apartment (that wasn’t) and started seeing Older-Libertarian-Boy, who was 10 years my senior and Trouble. I also managed to flirt with Ohio (via AIM), meet-up with Richie, and get overly invested in the Libertarian Message Board. I hated my job even though I told everyone I liked it. Hated it. I was very anti-social. I went to work and I came home from work and I spent a lot of time in my room and I drank too much vodka.

2008 began with the vague desire that it would be better than 2007 and the pit in my stomach that told me it wouldn’t be, unless I could change my behavior, REALLY change. I plodded along the few months, still seeing Older-Libertarian-Boy and knowing he was pretty much HWSNBN 2.0. When I got fired in April, it made part of my decision for me. I moved into my parents house in Jersey (temporarily, I said) and started to get help. Things were better for awhile. Then I made a disastrous trip out to Chicago with OLB for a Libertarian Message Board meet-up (and, for me, to meet Ohio). Everything that could go wrong did. Twenty minutes into the fourteen hour drive home from Chicago, OLB told me he didn’t want to see me anymore. The rest of that summer was a disaster. But Keith, who was also stuck at home, and I bonded. But then I started The-Job-That-Was (i.e., my current job.) It gave me back some of my confidence that had been destroyed by the job-that-wasn’t. I was still doing stupid things though. 2008 was garbage in its own uniquely awful way.

The first quarter of 2009 the stupid things continued. I finally crashed and burned on March 17^th and while it was a very expensive mistake, it was probably the best thing that could have happened, considering. This year, which Keith and I dubbed “Year of the Terrapin” has been about waiting and being stuck and moving forward in tiny, internal ways. The Libertarian Fellowship rejection sort of puts a damper on any good will feelings I may harbor towards this year. But even though it is not obvious to outsiders (and at times, not even to me) I know that 2009 was a better year than 2008.

What I wish for the next decade, is the ability to be more honest with myself and to let go of the insecurities that sometimes prevent me from being honest with others. And of course I want all the usuals – the career advancement, the new apartment in DC, (and really, the eventual return to NYC) and yes, a boy would be nice.

But really, I just want to be as happy as people like me can be.

“Hey There Delilah” just came on my iPod. I listened to this song constantly when I first moved back to NYC after grad school. It was one of the few songs my roommate could legitamately play on his guitar. And this decidedly-not-in-NYC boy used to sing the first line to me over the phone (What’s in like in New York City?/You’re a 1000 miles away/But girl tonight you look so pretty” )YES, I KNOW, SHUT UP.

This ties perfectly to what I started to write about yesterday and was distracted by work disaster, among other things – New York City. I really want to compose articulate essay-type work on the subject, because New York is so many things to me. But I’m also not sure what it is to me. I read Joan Didion’s essay about arriving in, living in, and leaving New York, but that is not quite appropriate for me, because I lived there briefly (too briefly) moved for grad school, moved back, and then my life sort of fell apart. I had plenty of romanticized experiences my first go around in New York and it was without a doubt the happiest time of my life. When I moved back there after grad school, I rarely left my apartment, other then for work.  

But I’ve said all this before, and that was years ago now. On the way to work I heard on the radio about them putting up the X-Mas tree at Rockerfeller Center, and even though I don’t see the magic of XMas in NYC (mostly, I just see even MORE tourists getting in my way) I worked in Midtown Proper and there was something to being there at Christmas.

The city is something it’s easy to be a romantic about and so I have to catch myself. It was this attitude that sent me scrambling back to New York after I finished grad school, even though it was clear even then that with my interests, I’d be better off in DC. Perhaps I’m paying for that now, though I still wouldn’t call it a mistake. It does emphasize to me that even if this Libertarian Fellowship doesn’t work out, I really need to give DC a chance anyway. Basically, after grad school I had the choice between giving love a second chance and a career. I chose the former, and it crashed and burned.

This metaphor is entirely tiresome, so I’m going to quit now. But I hate the notion that New York is for the very young, the place to come after college and live out your cliched dreams, and that if the opportunity ever presents itself to move back I’ll be too old and too jaded to really enjoy it.

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But anyway, I didn’t finish it, because whining is unattractive and to save myself from future cringing and deleting, I stopped writing. Also, laziness.

Anyway, so today was fine, of course, nothing out of the ordinary. Except tomorrow, I have jury duty. I have done everything to get out of this. I postponed it (for legit reasons) and I was hoping with all the furloughs and what have you, I would be one of those lucky people who gets to check the state website the night before and finds her number has not been chosen.

Alas, this afternoon there was a message IN GIANT RED TEXT informing me that ALL JURORS MUST REPORT.

Again, probably not a big deal. Trek down to the county seat courthouse tomorrow, waste the day away, and hope that they won’t choose me. Which of course will not allow me to even enjoy the fact that I can sit in the juror room and read, because I will be anxiety ridden about getting chosen for the jury, not being able to go to work, and I don’t know, an invoice not getting paid or the world ending, or something equally along those lines.

So now I am back to being cranky.

Do you know what this reminds me of?

The first day of Senior Year of high school. Brent and I took off after 9th, in the vapid mobile, to rage about the day. We both had Mr. Kuzma for AP US History II. Our assignment for the night was to draw a mind map about ourselves. This is exactly the type of pointless assignment that drove both of us insane. Brent was also irate because he had somehow (well, I know how. He is the smartest laziest person I know and he got Cs in AP English junior year) wound up in CP English, and it was filled with savages. Anyway, so we drove around, as we were prone to doing, and complained and whined and came up with whatever brilliant ways of denouncing things that we were so good at back in the day.

And I remember he said “Do you know what the worst day of school is? The second day of school.”

Which is totally true. The first day was usually no real work, you get your schedule, you see who is in your classes, teachers pass out books, and you think to yourself, “oh, this isn’t so bad!”

But then you’re alarm clock goes off at some ungodly hour the next morning and it’s like “God damnit, I have to do this for ANOTHER TEN MONTHS.”

It’s terrible.

And tomorrow, I have to get up SUPER EARLY and go to Jury Duty, and even though it’s only the first day back from a 3 day weekend, I AM CRANKY.

I just hope this doesn’t become a theme, like that time I was cranky for all of September/October. That was bad.

]]> http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/09/08/tuesdays-gray/feed/ 1 http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/08/31/wonder/ http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/08/31/wonder/#comments Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:40:38 +0000 Rachel Not Rebecca http://rachelnotrebecca.com/?p=5241 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.

All too frequently lately I am finding myself full of Regret, yes, with a capital R. I Regret that I was such a painfully shy recluse in college; I Regret that I didn’t take advantage of the opportunities, because I didn’t realize that that was one of the most free times of my life. I know this is fairly silly;  I am who I am because of how I lived for those 3.5 years, but still. When I’m lonely, I think that maybe I would be less lonely, had I made a bunch of friends in college.

All of these are counterfactuals, of course.

It also scares the hell out of me that The Year, the one that Richie and I proclaimed would be Important (and oh how Important it wound up being) started a decade ago. Ten years ago, I was nearing the end of one of those cliched coming of age summers. I had a crush on this guy who was 5 years older than me and probably the first guy about who I thought “Oh my god, he is SO hot.” Apparently I’ve always liked them older. He’s my friend on Facebook now. He’s married. He’s still hot. But anyway, that was all a decade ago, and I have no idea what to think of all that.

(this is the type of post that I will look at in a few days, cringe, and probably make private)

I think that what would make me happy right now, more than anything, would be to be back in NYC. But maybe, that’s borne of nostalgia. Migrating my entire livejournal over here has required more than one trip through my archives (and I’m nowhere near done) and I’m reading all about my adventures in NYC pre-graduate school. I write about how happy I am, about how I never dreamed my life could be this good.

And then there is Regret because I gave that all up and went to grad school, because I was supposed to and who the hell turns down a scholarship from University of Chicago.

Absent from the archives  (or at least, never public) are the miserable months between getting my post-grad school job and moving back to Jersey, tail between legs. Those months may have turned the city into a hostile environment for me. I don’t really know. There’s no record of them and even less memory.

 Maybe it’s the weather (it’s cool out – it’s perfect Back to School weather), maybe it’s my boredom. But I’m reading those entries, and I’m thinking of That Year and how both times I basically had to pinch myself to prove that it was real because it was so good. And because there’s no other way to say it than with a song lyrics I say “and I wonder…if anything could ever be this good again.”

Because I still wonder. Even though the habit has passed pathetic and is bordering on dangerous.

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But instead of memory, or a reflection on the fact that yesterday marked nine years to the day that I first kissed The Ex (and the fact that that was nearly a decade ago…my lord), or yet another navel-gazed novel about how I’m feeling I decided to go for a stream of consciousness blather. I’m not even going to re-read this before I post it.

I don’t know why I’m suddenly fretting about work. Maybe its because before this job turned permanent, I had the luxury of being able to say “well, it’s just a temp job. It doesn’t matter too much if I suck.” I’m also probably being over sensitive, because the experience at The-Job-That-Wasn’t was so dreadful that old habits are dying hard. It took me probably a month being here before I could even ask questions and take the answers at face value.

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 started this with the idea of blogging honestly “for like, the world,” but the idea’s a little scarier in practice. So I’m writing here, in this space that nobody knows exists and suddenly I have nothing to say. It’s as if I’ve forgotten how to write without an audience (because let’s face it. Livejournal was an audience. For HWSNBN. For The Ex. For the people I figured read it without telling me they read it.) It makes me wonder how I used to fill page after page in those Mead Spiral college ruled notebooks back in high school.

Browing through other blogs lately, I read things that are so familiar that I want to give myself a lobotomy. It forces me to feel things and it makes me want to write about them, even if someone has already said all the things I wish I had written, and has probably said it better than I ever could.

I can’t help but thinking about four years ago when the Election is all over the news, because around Election Day 2004 is where things start to get really hazy. This perhaps is a lame way to mark the passage of time, but the run-up to the presidential election naturally makes me think back to the fall of 2004.

I remember how far away December seemed at the beginning of that September, and how when December came, September was far away.  But I also know that I have to move beyond the defensiveness and walls that I built up as a result of all that.

I have to remind myself to slow down, sit down, and get the words out of my head. Even if no one is going to see them. And even if the eventual audience thinks it’s pointless. Even if it means admitting to anyone who reads this that no, I’m not perfect, my life’s not rose colored, and their’s might be a lot more together than mine.

Actually, along the lines of everything happens for a reason, and I”ve mentioned this before, I didn’t get the job I wound up at the first time; I got it a few weeks later. Charice, who originally got the job was promoted to work directly under KK. That’d would have been me if I’d been there first, because I wouldn’t have known any better. Thank god it wasn’t me.