Silver Linings
During my after-work smoke-and-Diet-Coke break (New Years’ resolutions lasted until April) I decided that I am experiencing my Quarter Life Crisis. I can’t help feeling that when it comes to the physical location of where I live, I don’t really belong anywhere.
It is so easy for literary types to hate on growing up in the middle class suburbs. But I can’t do it, not genuinely. I like that I had the kind of adolescence where the typical extracurriculars are smoking on the railroad tracks and making fun of MTV. I want to be ashamed that I spent high school cultivating angst, but the only place I found to direct my rage was the co-opting of Punk Rock aesthetics by the mainstream.
I suspect my preferred state of being will forever be in the middle of a mid-size city, barefoot, subsisting on a CSA share occasionally supplemented by cigarettes, candy bars and carbonated soft drinks. I’m excited about my move next week, knowing full well I can never truly be a Madison hippie-I’m too much a Jersey Girl.
I’ve seen so many different models for a community to operate that I’ll never be satisfied. Rural life can be quaint and relaxing, but there’s no one around and there’s nothing to do. Everything’s always open in the suburbs, someone is always awake, but you can’t spit (out your existential frustration) without hitting a mall. The activist city, the gentrified city, brings out my insomnia and coffee-addiction in full force because I’m always so damn overstimulated and curious. I can’t set down roots if I can’t even find a bed I know how to sleep in.
But maybe rootlessness is also adaptability. I like to think I could survive anywhere.* I moved to a rural area I’d never heard of before and somehow lasted a year-in large part due to farm fresh eggs, unbelievably cheap used book sales and thrifty thrift stores. Yesterday after work I walked four miles on the Northwestern Trail, and I go to the prairie conservancy every day it’s not raining. I was in Real America this year when the district of the Birthplace of the Republic Party went for Obama.
I can spin myself a life out of silver linings, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be comfortable.
I think it’s a good thing. Shoot me if you ever hear me satisfied.
*Once I learn Spanish and Afrikaans I’d like to try this outside of the U.S.
It is so easy for literary types to hate on growing up in the middle class suburbs. But I can’t do it, not genuinely. I like that I had the kind of adolescence where the typical extracurriculars are smoking on the railroad tracks and making fun of MTV. I want to be ashamed that I spent high school cultivating angst, but the only place I found to direct my rage was the co-opting of Punk Rock aesthetics by the mainstream.
I suspect my preferred state of being will forever be in the middle of a mid-size city, barefoot, subsisting on a CSA share occasionally supplemented by cigarettes, candy bars and carbonated soft drinks. I’m excited about my move next week, knowing full well I can never truly be a Madison hippie-I’m too much a Jersey Girl.
I’ve seen so many different models for a community to operate that I’ll never be satisfied. Rural life can be quaint and relaxing, but there’s no one around and there’s nothing to do. Everything’s always open in the suburbs, someone is always awake, but you can’t spit (out your existential frustration) without hitting a mall. The activist city, the gentrified city, brings out my insomnia and coffee-addiction in full force because I’m always so damn overstimulated and curious. I can’t set down roots if I can’t even find a bed I know how to sleep in.
But maybe rootlessness is also adaptability. I like to think I could survive anywhere.* I moved to a rural area I’d never heard of before and somehow lasted a year-in large part due to farm fresh eggs, unbelievably cheap used book sales and thrifty thrift stores. Yesterday after work I walked four miles on the Northwestern Trail, and I go to the prairie conservancy every day it’s not raining. I was in Real America this year when the district of the Birthplace of the Republic Party went for Obama.
I can spin myself a life out of silver linings, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be comfortable.
I think it’s a good thing. Shoot me if you ever hear me satisfied.
*Once I learn Spanish and Afrikaans I’d like to try this outside of the U.S.