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.

At first, the requirement to create content drives me. It inspires me. The topics are as mundane as always, but they’re infused with that certain-something thing that I wish I could reference with utter sincerity. That is one of the first things you should know about me. At least half of what I say is tongue in cheek. Most of the time I am being strictly ironic when I use the vernacular. (I will purposefully use “like” to emphasis a point and hide its’ seriousness in one syllable)

I used to find a lot of things to write about. Life DID feel like magic. I don’t need the entries as evidence, because I remember, but the entries are proof that I used to able to talk about certain-somethings without the slightest bit of irony.

[EDIT] I have posted a bunch of stuff from my paper journals, which has thrown off my post count. I feel the need to note that here [EDIT]

I have written 1,166 posts. This makes 1,167. Some of those are private and I’ve definitely deleted posts altogether, but still, that’s not so many posts for seven years. That’s about 166 posts a year. About a post every three days. When I say it like that, it does sound like a lot, as if my life would be completely and accurately (ha!) documented here. But it’s not. It’s missing the months I spent in Europe in 2003 (although I did write that all down and the journal is Somewhere) and when things are stuck, like now, I’m less inclined to write.  And then there are all the things that I hid from myself that I still can’t bring myself to blog publically about.

So I’m sitting here, on a Thursday morning, blogging about blogging, because NaBloPoMo exists, and gives me an excuse to write things like this. I have to post every day for 30 days, and hey, a post about posting makes one! Great!

But it’s more than that. I thoroughly (and unsuitably) miss my old audience. HWSNBN, for all his flaws, and for all the ways in which the situation with him was bad for my sanity and self-esteem and whatever, got me to write. He is the one who made me feel like writing down all these words was actually important. Which is also ironic, because I don’t think he ever really gave a damn about anything I said. And I cringe when I think of those essays I wrote back in 2004-2005 that I let him read.

Things between us ended so long ago – five years ago, actually. But there is so much of him in so many things I do. He is, after all, how I wound up in NYC in the first place. Five years ago, I remember writing something about how it was so confusing to let the same hands that pushed you away, pull you back up. He was always the master of mixed signals (and I, admittedly, was the queen of selective hearing) and for all the ways in which he made me weak, he made me believe in things again. And for that, I still miss him sometimes.

So Evan, this is for you. Because it’s a Thursday morning, it feels like summer, Skidmore won’t stop sending me emails, I miss the city, I’m trying to cull together words that collectively Mean Something and I’m wearing khakis and that makes me think of you.

In honor (or perhaps dishonor) of Salinger, I am posting an essay I wrote a number of years ago. 2004 to be exact. It’s a bit lengthy for a blog post, so it’s behind the cut. Yikes it is PAINFUL to read things you wrote 6 years ago, and actually SUBMITTED for a grade.

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I have posted a VERY rough draft of “The Problem of Replacing Pamie” , the not-so-sordid tale of my experiences at The-Job-That-Wasn’t, is posted over on my Essays page.

The ending in particular just trails off, but if you are so inclined to read, any comments/suggestions would be welcome. I am posting it long before it is finished, because if I don’t, I will never work on it.

Today was insane. However, I think my shopping bug has finally passed, thank god.

My room is already a mess. I’m tired. I’m not happy with any of my interview outfits. I think I’m burned out. I have not been reading up on foreign policy and my justification for this is that cramming for the interview isn’t going to be helpful.

But mostly it’s that I can’t concentrate. That’s why it’s almost 9:00 and I’m just now writing the last blog entry of the month. Which also means I haven’t read any of your blogs. I’m sorry. This is also why I stay up late for no reason, because I keep putting off doing things that I want to do, because of an inability to concentrate on, say, the entire series of the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor that I just got. I didn’t know most of them existed! I read about 5 of these when I was maybe 14ish, and I always liked them well enough, but they were not among books I saved.

(Example of my lack of concentration: I just had to get up and clean a few things off my nightstand/shove stuff in a drawer because I could not stand to look at the disarray for one more second)

Ok, I think I’m done. Because while i theoretically have a bunch of stuff going on what with the interview/trip to DC, and work being busy, and the fact that I can drive again, I still DON’T have anything going on in terms of social life/boys/drama or any of the other stuff that I used to fill blog entries about.

Happy Almost December!

November needs to end, so I can stop writing about the first thing that comes into my head, and actually have a chance to write something decent.

I’ve been up for almost two hours, but I’m still groggy from the Benadryll, probably, even though I only took one. I don’t know how my body can handle a super powerful anti-anxiety drug that knocks me the hell out (I don’t take it every night) but can’t recover from Benadryll.

Writing about work on a blog that could be discovered is a surefire way to get yourself in trouble, so I will just say that it was a trying week and yesterday was a bad afternoon. I know where its coming from – everyone is dealing with unreasonable demands and ridiculous deadlines. It’s not going to get any better anytime soon though, so it doesn’t seem worth delving into.

I’ve given myself an assignment to get caught up on general foreign policy news this weekend, because my knowledge is general and out dated. On one hand – I work full time, and while I don’t have much else going on right now, the Libertarian Fellowship people don’t know that, so I think it should be understandable that I don’t have the same level of knowledge about current events as someone who works in the think tank field. On the other, logic is hardly ever a factor in these things, so I better study up.

I really hate having to say “the war on terror” when I talk about my interests, because everyone is sick of the war on terror. People were sick of the war on terror two and a half years ago when I was writing my thesis. I didn’t even want to GO there, but Carl Schmitt, that rapscallion, he made it impossible not to. And I think that my work, and the work that I want to do is valid, and relevant, and hell, even important, but using the phrase “war on terror” seems to cheapen it. It seems dated. But I don’t know what other name to give to the general, overall U.S. strategy/foreign policy stance(s) in the post-September 11th era (another reference that I am loathe to make. I don’t think the event should have changed out policies like it did, but that’s another rant altogether.)

My cat is curled up at the end of my bed, fast asleep. He seems to have the right idea.

Since fall always feels like a New Beginning to me, moreso than January 1st, it is appropriate that my New Year and Day of Atonement fall in September/October.

I am technically Jewish. When I tell people that I am a Jewish Atheist they usually don’t get it. I don’t believe in God, but I still consider myself a member of the tribe. I don’t have the name and the nose for nothing.

Taking the year from September to September, there are plenty of things for which I owe atonement. This I know. This year is the sum of its mistakes, including one so big that I’m sure David would yell at me for merely giving it the label of ‘mistake.’ So far, I have atoned for it the only way I know how – by one days at a time and by the next right thing, by actions and attitudes I was trying to take at this time last year, and failing miserably.

I’m being purposefully vague. Moving on.

I tried out blogging “for like, the world,” at this time last year, but the idea didn’t quite work in practice. Lack of discipline was one of the reasons, my inability to decide what the space was for was another. I’d written in Livejournal so long, directed those words at audiences that no longer existed, and now with a space where I could create my own audience, I was at a loss for how and what to write in it.

People talk about how blogging has changed their life, the real honest to goodness friends they have made through blogging, and that’s something I’d like to do too. The internet has been a source of friendships to me for nearly a decade now. But, just like I stumble socially in real life, I immediately come up with a half a dozen reasons why blogging won’t do for me what it has for dozens if not hundreds of other people. I’m too late to the party with nothing interesting to say and trying too hard.

But I have to write right now. My life is boring and stuck right now, and for the umpteenth time there is nothing I can do about it at this particular moment, but it’s not always going to be that way. I have to believe that, even when I look back on last September, when I was saying such similar things, even though a year later I’m still stuck, I have to believe that this year I’m going to find a way to change that.

Two years ago today I started The-Job-That-Wasn’t. The casual observer probably finds it ridiculous that I mention The-Job-That-Wasn’t so often. Everyone has had a bad job or a bad boss – usually more than one. What is it about my experience that is any different?

That is, in part, what I have been trying to write about for the better part of the year – because I never wrote about it when it was actually happening.

 The working title of the essay is “The Problem of Replacing [Pamie]” (not her real name) and I’m trying to capture what it was like to try and replace someone, who was, in everyone else’s estimation, perfect. Every single day when I would walk into Important-Boss’s office with the morning report, he would glance up, with withering disappointment that it was me, not her standing there. As if she had disappeared instead of been promoted. 

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Read Me First

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This morning’s entry reminded me about my sorry lack of journaling lately. I do have a small notebook that I carry around and record bullet points of the day. It’s easier than having to find the time to sit down and write paragraphs and string together ideas.

I’ve mentioned before that I have trouble committing myself to mussing over my thoughts and emotions and ideas. It forces me to dwell and for the past eighteen months or so, dwelling has been dangerous. It is only in hindsight, as I see my number of entries dwindle, that I realize just how reluctant I have been to face my mind in a metaphorical mirror.

Here Are The Facts

I didn’t stop for coffee this morning and therefore did not realize that I did not have my wallet until I got to work. Grrr. Not only do I desperately need caffeine, but it’s also annoying to not have my wallet – I’m going to have to borrow a couple dollars for lunch, because I don’t have food here.

I think I am buying my car this weekend. I will be glad to get it over with. Initially, I wasn’t going to buy until early May, but my hand was sort of forced to do so early. I am okay with that now – I think I am okay money wise, even with needed a new laptop. I think, anyway. I am not very good at budgeting.

I talked to Sarah, a girl I went to grad school with, briefly yesterday afternoon. I was telling her about my essay and bashing our preceptor. She still works at UChicago, so she is literally right down the hall from him, which is weird. The year at UChicago still feels like a dream to me at times.

Anyway, this is yet another entry that I’m writing, where I really have nothing to say, but I hope that by forcing myself into regular blogging, the brilliance will come back to me. If I ever had it to begin with.

In continuing my trend of only being able to make friends via the internet, for the past month or so, I have been meeting up with this guy, lets call him The Writer, to collaborate/trade ideas about writing projects. We don’t get much writing done when we hang out; we just chat, and talk a lot about career options. I think he does most of the talking.

And I’m not sure what to make of the situation. Not because I’m interested in him (I’m not) or because I think he’s interested in me (he’s not. In between casual meet-ups we don’t even exchange emails) but it’s just odd. It’s not quite a professional relationship, especially because we’re not producing anything of professional quality, but it’s only a step above it. I can’t decide if I’d like to hang out with him more as friends, and do something other than go to Starbucks to type away on our laptops and babble about fairly “professional” topics. He seems fairly anti-social, and so I’m inclined to get psyched into thinking “awesome! someone just as bored as me! We should be bored in Jersey, together” When, really, it’s more likely that he doesn’t really need anything to do on Saturday night, thank you very much.

As I feared, I suck as blogging, or keeping a blog, or whatever. How the hell did I manage to keep journals in high school? What the HELL did I write about everyday. (Actually, these are readily accesible in the attic on my parents house. The sad thing is that reading them would make me want to be 15, because I would probably be envious of my innocence. Uck. I am shutting up about that now!)

I was just thinking today that I have become a very bad blogger. It also the case that everything I write seems to be a bit too angsty or TMI-y or emo for public consumption. How I wish blogging had been around when I was 16…

Actually,  given what I know about me at 16, that would not end well.

Shudder.

Anyway, I actually logged into my email and found a comment from an “Anonymous” asking me about what made me go to Hampshire, and bad college experiences in general. This could be a joke from one of my friends who has stumbled upon my blog and wants to roll their eyes at my spiel on the subject. 

Even if that’s the case, I could still probably write something up here, and probably should on the whole subject of “How College Was Not The Best Four Years of My Life, Because If Those Were The Best Four Years of My Life, I Should Just Die Now” especially now that I have survived a few years in grown-up world (And grad school) I was painfully, horribly shy in college.

And I’ll try to write something worthwhile on the subject soon. Or any subject.

If I’m not careful, I’m going to stop writing here before I ever really started. I still haven’t linked to here from everywhere, not even from my own LJ, where I have a whole 5 readers.

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.

I have been on Livejournal for five years. Five years ago, I started this in McClellan 102, when I was really, really angry about the stupid knee-jerk anti-war reactionaries. That was the semester I took 20 credits, worked 2 jobs, and came out as a conservative.

Five years of my life are on the internet.

Last night, I railed against my anti-social instinct and went out with a group of Astorians for wing night at one of the local bars. I got to see some of the old timers (and I count myself among them at this point); Laura, Jim, Meg, Tom, and Josh all showed up. Laura and I discussed our dislike of Chicago. Lots of new faces again too. It felt good to rekindle the Astoria-love a little.

Tonight I am thinking of going to a lecture (and I have a choice between two lectures!) but nagging thoughts like how much I need to clean my apartment are holding me back. Which is silly, because cleaning the apartment never takes that long. It’s just thinking about it that makes me slightly nuts.

 When I got home last night, I read something so scary-relevant to one of my situations that it almost made my brain explode. I could write about it, but it’s too soon to tell this story. It’s not a story yet. It’s just an anecdote. Maybe that anecdote will be Chapter One. Maybe it will remain a “potential.” Either way, it makes me think about words on the tip of my tongue and in the back of my throat. 

 Now I must go be productive. I am behind on a project, sort of. I am tired, but somewhat clearheaded. I need to get some caffeine in my system and get some work done.