further stock-taking
Exhumed from deep iBook storage ...... 23 April 2007
So here I am. Three apartments and a relationship, quite a few bottles of scotch and quite a few more bottles of wine, some tattoos, most of a master’s degree and a student loan later, having lost both pounds and credit score points, undeniably older, a little smarter, and dubiously wiser.
Things don’t always turn out like you plan them, but I’ve never been too good at planning in the first place. I”m trying, with faltering yet persistent success, to believe the cliches that every closed door leads to a new room, for every loss there is a gain, (for example I’m pretty sure I’ve lost a significant amount of dignity, but somehow, perhaps paradoxically or even inevitably, gained self-respect), and all that jive.
Time flies (duh). I look back on the last 4 years or so and don’t quite know where they went. That realization is tinged with more than a little sadness and horror, and maybe I just can’t process that yet. Then again I’m also so far from the person I was back before then (I think) that if I think about it too hard I get afraid that I don’t know who I am at all. But I do. Know who I am, I mean, at least on a basic level.
I guess it doesn’t help that the physical backdrop of my “old” life, the one I’ve built my whole little aesthetic/ socioemotional/cultural world around-including or maybe especially the one that became the last 4 years-is rapidly warping and fading, becoming unrecognizable.
I happened to stop by a coffee shop (Alt Coffee on Ave. A) yesterday that I used to go to when I first moved to NY- before I lived here, even. I’ve been here 7 years, and that place has been there far longer. As it turned out it was closing today. A lot of stories that place had-both sordid and lovely. It was nice, for once, to be there right before something ended forever, to receive at least a little fair warning. Instead of just feeling disoriented and odd when I walk past a place I’ve passed or been to many times and know that something just isn’t right. At least, instead of having the proverbial rug repeatedly and suddenly swept out from under me, I can go ahead and be maudlin about it, target a source for my confusion.
I guess lately, in general, I am just trying to target a source for my confusion and stay on it. Because, really, when you get down to it, and it’s just you and your life with nothing to fall back on, sad is far more manageable than out-and-out psychocrazypants.
For all my ranting, I didn’t fuck up in November. I still have my 3.9 GPA. Grad degree in sight. I won’t keep it if I don’t get to work instead of postulating and preening.
But for the record, there it is.
So here I am. Three apartments and a relationship, quite a few bottles of scotch and quite a few more bottles of wine, some tattoos, most of a master’s degree and a student loan later, having lost both pounds and credit score points, undeniably older, a little smarter, and dubiously wiser.
Things don’t always turn out like you plan them, but I’ve never been too good at planning in the first place. I”m trying, with faltering yet persistent success, to believe the cliches that every closed door leads to a new room, for every loss there is a gain, (for example I’m pretty sure I’ve lost a significant amount of dignity, but somehow, perhaps paradoxically or even inevitably, gained self-respect), and all that jive.
Time flies (duh). I look back on the last 4 years or so and don’t quite know where they went. That realization is tinged with more than a little sadness and horror, and maybe I just can’t process that yet. Then again I’m also so far from the person I was back before then (I think) that if I think about it too hard I get afraid that I don’t know who I am at all. But I do. Know who I am, I mean, at least on a basic level.
I guess it doesn’t help that the physical backdrop of my “old” life, the one I’ve built my whole little aesthetic/ socioemotional/cultural world around-including or maybe especially the one that became the last 4 years-is rapidly warping and fading, becoming unrecognizable.
I happened to stop by a coffee shop (Alt Coffee on Ave. A) yesterday that I used to go to when I first moved to NY- before I lived here, even. I’ve been here 7 years, and that place has been there far longer. As it turned out it was closing today. A lot of stories that place had-both sordid and lovely. It was nice, for once, to be there right before something ended forever, to receive at least a little fair warning. Instead of just feeling disoriented and odd when I walk past a place I’ve passed or been to many times and know that something just isn’t right. At least, instead of having the proverbial rug repeatedly and suddenly swept out from under me, I can go ahead and be maudlin about it, target a source for my confusion.
I guess lately, in general, I am just trying to target a source for my confusion and stay on it. Because, really, when you get down to it, and it’s just you and your life with nothing to fall back on, sad is far more manageable than out-and-out psychocrazypants.
For all my ranting, I didn’t fuck up in November. I still have my 3.9 GPA. Grad degree in sight. I won’t keep it if I don’t get to work instead of postulating and preening.
But for the record, there it is.