Keeping it 'Querque in Albuquerque
Introverted people gain energy from being alone, and the presence of others drains their energy. Extroverted people gain energy from being around others, and being alone drains their energy. The problem with being an introverted person, mainly, is that the more I need the people in my life, the more I pull away on grounds of psychological strain. My entire life I've worked to build solid relationships, and to devote the time and energy those relationships deserve to their maintenance, but it's a constant battle against my hermit-on-the-hill nature.
Rd: It's been awhile; my B.
*sigh* This entry has been brewing for months, but I don't know any better for the waiting how to recap or say what's been on my mind.
Plan Acquire Real Job failed, as you are all well aware. It appears the employment gods sniffed, poked, and quickly rejected my burnt offerings, so rendering the sacrifice of a good year of my youth to the grad school beasties wholly futile. The 'sniffing and poking' phase took place while I applied and waited back in Buffalo, from September to half way through March. Six and a half months of winter, unemployed, alone, and living with one's steadily deafening, retired parents in the boonies of Buffalo is the sort of particularly brutal exile usually reserved for political and social dissidents in dystopic literature. Getting a minimum wage/service job there would have meant planning to stay indefinitely, though, and I couldn't bring myself to do it. That could not be the new plan or I would have wound up dead.
So, acting on a beyond-generous invitation from LdF, college partner in crime, I packed my life into 3 checked bags and 2 carry-ons, and boarded the (literal) midnight train out of Buffalo. It was a cold, dark, surreal exit, with a strange mix of Muslim and Amish passengers, the latter bearing shovels as their carry-on luggage. Two days of contemplative travel later, including my first glimpse of the Mississippi, which hasn't fully left my mind since, and a great many "rocks and mountains" as viewed from aboard the Southwest Chief, I found myself dumped in Albuquerque. The baggage claim was outdoors and unsheltered: my first realization that I wasn't, as they say, in Kansas anymore. Route 66 runs through Albuquerque, which is a city almost as sad and dilapidated as Buffalo, just with a lot more adobe architecture (which styling leaves one with the unsettling impression of living on a Flintstone's set), too many ants of all colors and sizes and places of inhabitance (the kitchen, the bathroom, fountaining up from under every sidewalk paving stone), --------
Jesus Christ, it just tried twice in a row to delete the entry, the first time pretending that it hadn't autosaved. Which would have been ironic bc my last attempt at written communication was a completed message to the Jennie that fb promptly ate. For a moment I thought the forces that be really don't want me communicating with people ever. Ok. Ok, it is fine. Moving on.
------ every sidewalk paving stone), green chilies in all of the food which is apparently a local thing and actually meticulously delicious, but too few green and growing things, generally. That said, I've been emotionally a lot happier and psychologically much more stable since coming here. My life exists off of Laura's couch and I'm homesick, for the North East generally, Cole specifically, for my mother, cliche though it sounds. But Laura is a rockstar, I like her boyfriend and friends down here, her apartment is adorable, we've hosted lots of dinner parties (Laura cooks (DELICIOUS FOODS) and directs my chopping and stirring and things; I clean up), gone out with her people, did Eastery things, window shopped, baked, watched lots of Dawson's Creek and Gossip Girl, etc. Hanging out with people and having an accessible social network: I've missed that incredibly. *I have missed having people so much.* It has all just been so lonely for so long. They are still all her people though and, far more unfortunately, they are all going to disappear and soon, with the end of term. Laura at least is going to be in Spain on her cave excavation for two months, not even counting time she'll spend back home in Hershey before and after the dig. Laura leaves, Lisa leaves, Kyle leaves, Daniel leaves, Emily stays. For the hottest, driest, most unpleasantly desert-like time to be in fucking New Mexico. Which makes me question why I'm here, or at least why I'm here now, instead of having moved here at the start of the next school year, when everyone is back and Laura's lease is up and we could get a 2-bdrm place anyway. The whole point of moving down here was to not be lonely, and it looks like soon I'll be more alone than I would have been in Buffalo. I just can't seem to win, whichever direction I turn. But that's the last whiny thing I'll say on that note for now.
I got a job at Flying Star, a local restaurant chain with a local plants/organic/happy animals mandate. It seems like a pretty good set-up, as minimum wage employment goes. And any employment is better than no employment. The problem is, it took me awhile to get said job, and then a spot in the orientation class, and now they're training me on two, four-hour shifts a week. In the meantime, I've been living here for a month and a half and even with minimum expenses, living ain't free. Five training shifts total and then I'll be full time though. Anyway, other than bloody-oozing-foot-death from breaking in the required work shoes, the training has been going pretty well and everyone seems cool. I'm just grateful to have a job.
Pipe dream of the day: My father's best friend's wife, Lisa, used to work for a company called Ecology & Environment, and a close friend of hers still works there in HR (6 degrees from Kevin Bacon anyone?). Apparently said friend also has her MLIS, and Lisa is going to put in a good word for my application. I applied for 'general employment' 'anywhere,' but Buffalo is one of their central locations, so I could possibly get an Information Science or HR or whatever job in Western NY. I'm trying not to think about the possibility, let alone be hopeful, and I haven't heard anything back from them... but especially facing three hot, dry, lonely months in the desert, it's hard not to at least wish.
The weather is beautiful. The sky is appropriately enormous and blue, as an American Western sky should be, and the few trees have fully dressed themselves in leaves by now. There's a rose bush next to the door, flowering beautifully. Perhaps I will walk to Sunflower (nearest grocery store) for more salad things. I've definitely put on more than a pound or two since getting here but I scarcely care, so long as it stops there.
Regardless of how things turn out with the Ecology & Environment job, whether I stay here alone for the summer or not, I'm just trying to tell myself it will all work out fine. Because how else can it work out, really? Everything has been so frustrating and so lonely and so horrible for so long, that although I know it certainly Can get worse and Easily, it can't really do so without becoming funny again, for awhile at least. A dinosaur probably shat out half of the particles in my brain at some point: how seriously can I possibly take myself.
Andrew is gone and I'm still mourning him, even as I acknowledge to myself that he was an asshole and treated me poorly and the friendship lightly and that the whole thing was stupid anyway, and Donnie is redeploying to Afghanistan and has disappeared again, but he's been such a boomerang that I can't even care (edit: and oh look, he responded to the third fb message. I am almost as shocked about that as I am that he ignored the others), and Alex still lurks around the corners on Gchat in spite of not knowing quite why I keep him at all. Most of the people from college are gone, and I'm nearing broke and my prospects are poor and *I do not care*, because I'm not dead yet. The rest is just white noise.
Apologies that this is perhaps a bit dark or sardonic or mordant, and lost steam as it went on. Like I said, I wasn't sure where to bite first in the process of digesting all of this... That's where my head is at for the time being though: exuberant immolation of what's left, because there's little enough one might as well start from scratch anyway.
Right, buying groceries while the sun shines.
Rd: It's been awhile; my B.
*sigh* This entry has been brewing for months, but I don't know any better for the waiting how to recap or say what's been on my mind.
Plan Acquire Real Job failed, as you are all well aware. It appears the employment gods sniffed, poked, and quickly rejected my burnt offerings, so rendering the sacrifice of a good year of my youth to the grad school beasties wholly futile. The 'sniffing and poking' phase took place while I applied and waited back in Buffalo, from September to half way through March. Six and a half months of winter, unemployed, alone, and living with one's steadily deafening, retired parents in the boonies of Buffalo is the sort of particularly brutal exile usually reserved for political and social dissidents in dystopic literature. Getting a minimum wage/service job there would have meant planning to stay indefinitely, though, and I couldn't bring myself to do it. That could not be the new plan or I would have wound up dead.
So, acting on a beyond-generous invitation from LdF, college partner in crime, I packed my life into 3 checked bags and 2 carry-ons, and boarded the (literal) midnight train out of Buffalo. It was a cold, dark, surreal exit, with a strange mix of Muslim and Amish passengers, the latter bearing shovels as their carry-on luggage. Two days of contemplative travel later, including my first glimpse of the Mississippi, which hasn't fully left my mind since, and a great many "rocks and mountains" as viewed from aboard the Southwest Chief, I found myself dumped in Albuquerque. The baggage claim was outdoors and unsheltered: my first realization that I wasn't, as they say, in Kansas anymore. Route 66 runs through Albuquerque, which is a city almost as sad and dilapidated as Buffalo, just with a lot more adobe architecture (which styling leaves one with the unsettling impression of living on a Flintstone's set), too many ants of all colors and sizes and places of inhabitance (the kitchen, the bathroom, fountaining up from under every sidewalk paving stone), --------
Jesus Christ, it just tried twice in a row to delete the entry, the first time pretending that it hadn't autosaved. Which would have been ironic bc my last attempt at written communication was a completed message to the Jennie that fb promptly ate. For a moment I thought the forces that be really don't want me communicating with people ever. Ok. Ok, it is fine. Moving on.
------ every sidewalk paving stone), green chilies in all of the food which is apparently a local thing and actually meticulously delicious, but too few green and growing things, generally. That said, I've been emotionally a lot happier and psychologically much more stable since coming here. My life exists off of Laura's couch and I'm homesick, for the North East generally, Cole specifically, for my mother, cliche though it sounds. But Laura is a rockstar, I like her boyfriend and friends down here, her apartment is adorable, we've hosted lots of dinner parties (Laura cooks (DELICIOUS FOODS) and directs my chopping and stirring and things; I clean up), gone out with her people, did Eastery things, window shopped, baked, watched lots of Dawson's Creek and Gossip Girl, etc. Hanging out with people and having an accessible social network: I've missed that incredibly. *I have missed having people so much.* It has all just been so lonely for so long. They are still all her people though and, far more unfortunately, they are all going to disappear and soon, with the end of term. Laura at least is going to be in Spain on her cave excavation for two months, not even counting time she'll spend back home in Hershey before and after the dig. Laura leaves, Lisa leaves, Kyle leaves, Daniel leaves, Emily stays. For the hottest, driest, most unpleasantly desert-like time to be in fucking New Mexico. Which makes me question why I'm here, or at least why I'm here now, instead of having moved here at the start of the next school year, when everyone is back and Laura's lease is up and we could get a 2-bdrm place anyway. The whole point of moving down here was to not be lonely, and it looks like soon I'll be more alone than I would have been in Buffalo. I just can't seem to win, whichever direction I turn. But that's the last whiny thing I'll say on that note for now.
I got a job at Flying Star, a local restaurant chain with a local plants/organic/happy animals mandate. It seems like a pretty good set-up, as minimum wage employment goes. And any employment is better than no employment. The problem is, it took me awhile to get said job, and then a spot in the orientation class, and now they're training me on two, four-hour shifts a week. In the meantime, I've been living here for a month and a half and even with minimum expenses, living ain't free. Five training shifts total and then I'll be full time though. Anyway, other than bloody-oozing-foot-death from breaking in the required work shoes, the training has been going pretty well and everyone seems cool. I'm just grateful to have a job.
Pipe dream of the day: My father's best friend's wife, Lisa, used to work for a company called Ecology & Environment, and a close friend of hers still works there in HR (6 degrees from Kevin Bacon anyone?). Apparently said friend also has her MLIS, and Lisa is going to put in a good word for my application. I applied for 'general employment' 'anywhere,' but Buffalo is one of their central locations, so I could possibly get an Information Science or HR or whatever job in Western NY. I'm trying not to think about the possibility, let alone be hopeful, and I haven't heard anything back from them... but especially facing three hot, dry, lonely months in the desert, it's hard not to at least wish.
The weather is beautiful. The sky is appropriately enormous and blue, as an American Western sky should be, and the few trees have fully dressed themselves in leaves by now. There's a rose bush next to the door, flowering beautifully. Perhaps I will walk to Sunflower (nearest grocery store) for more salad things. I've definitely put on more than a pound or two since getting here but I scarcely care, so long as it stops there.
Regardless of how things turn out with the Ecology & Environment job, whether I stay here alone for the summer or not, I'm just trying to tell myself it will all work out fine. Because how else can it work out, really? Everything has been so frustrating and so lonely and so horrible for so long, that although I know it certainly Can get worse and Easily, it can't really do so without becoming funny again, for awhile at least. A dinosaur probably shat out half of the particles in my brain at some point: how seriously can I possibly take myself.
Andrew is gone and I'm still mourning him, even as I acknowledge to myself that he was an asshole and treated me poorly and the friendship lightly and that the whole thing was stupid anyway, and Donnie is redeploying to Afghanistan and has disappeared again, but he's been such a boomerang that I can't even care (edit: and oh look, he responded to the third fb message. I am almost as shocked about that as I am that he ignored the others), and Alex still lurks around the corners on Gchat in spite of not knowing quite why I keep him at all. Most of the people from college are gone, and I'm nearing broke and my prospects are poor and *I do not care*, because I'm not dead yet. The rest is just white noise.
Apologies that this is perhaps a bit dark or sardonic or mordant, and lost steam as it went on. Like I said, I wasn't sure where to bite first in the process of digesting all of this... That's where my head is at for the time being though: exuberant immolation of what's left, because there's little enough one might as well start from scratch anyway.
Right, buying groceries while the sun shines.