bye

Everybody’s lea­ving, it seems. I might be too. I don’t want to, honestly. But there is a Big Impor­tant Job down in New York City that might save my life if I let it. Last week I spent five days ago­ni­zing over which variant of Trade Gothic to use on my résumé; then I had a dream Thurs­day night about a fucked-up two-column for­mat that I was so sic­ke­ningly proud of that I actually applied with it.

I was watching a speech recently in which the author of Stum­bling Upon Hap­pi­ness was desc­ri­bing the phe­no­me­non of pre­fe­rring the out­come of an irre­ver­si­ble choice after the deci­sion more than before it — desc­ri­bing this phe­no­me­non as being intui­tive. Am I alone or don’t a lot of peo­ple work pre­ci­sely the oppo­site way? When I choose something irre­ver­sibly, it beco­mes worse in my eyes than its alter­na­ti­ves. Maybe just a symp­tom of chro­nic pes­si­mism, or as I pre­fer to call it, hard-boiled realism.

Any­way, every minute that pas­ses since I sent in that résumé is more exc­ru­cia­ting and remor­se­ful than the last. Sad to say if I get the job, it’ll be the first one that “counts,” the first one where I’m doing something at least periphe­rally rela­ted to something I actually like for the sake of liking it, like–liking it.

So I guess this is another diary-like post. I wish it were like 1999 and none of my friends were too proud to have a Live­Jour­nal. There are some stran­gers’ blogs I read who have little close-knit LJ com­mu­ni­ties like that, where they just talk about shit and post pic­tu­res and then com­ment on each other’s posts with inside jokes and stuff. That sounds cool. In the mean­time I feel bad for peo­ple who found this place Goo­gling for Fire­fox tips or something then subsc­ri­bed to it thin­king it’s a tech blog. Sorry, this isn’t a tech blog. I don’t know what it is.

Sun­day marks two years since I first lis­te­ned to Ys. It’s not my favo­rite album or anything but it does repre­sent the begin­ning of fall for me, and I meant to wait until the anni­ver­sary date to start lis­te­ning to it again, but my memory fai­led me and I star­ted yes­ter­day. The details of my life.

Then again I feel like that’s what kind of hap­pens when you get old. It’s trou­bling. In college things are always in flux, there’s exams and sche­du­les and pro­jects and deci­sions and dead­li­nes. After that, if you have a steady job and live in the same place for a sig­ni­fi­cant length of time, you’re just an adult con­su­ming media. I’m natu­rally nos­tal­gic, but at the same time I don’t like the idea that I’m lis­te­ning to the same album on pre­ci­sely the same street at pre­ci­sely the same time that I was 720 days ago. Or, rather, that I haven’t chan­ged since then. Even my crea­tive out­lets are rou­tine and predictable.

I’ve been living in this city for almost three con­se­cu­tive years, I think the lon­gest I’ve lived in any one place in my adult life. I’ve moved from Illi­nois to Mas­sachu­setts to Ohio and back to Mas­sachu­setts again. I feel like I need to squeeze in one more major change before I hit 30, which will hap­pen in just over two years.

I remem­ber rea­ding a long time ago about Andy Warhol saying he likes being in a rut. It’s little consolation.