it is done

I may have applied again to the job at Chronicle Books.

Say, it seems a lot like masochism, doesn't it?

Oh well. If I don't get the job, then B-o-b can rest easy knowing I'll be career-disenchanted for at least another year.

Win-win.

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the thick of it, or, the grass is always greener

Whenever a certain kind of person somehow wrangles someone into a long-term relationship it seems—no matter how on your side they were at one point—a set of steel blinders come crashing down over their now attachedtoasignificantother eyes.

In short: they become clowns who forget that being single actually did suck, and that no trite, pseudo-philosophical epitaph they could possibly conjure about how when you meet the "right" person everything will "fall into place" and stop "worrying" and "enjoy" your "single life" because dating someone who loves and adores you is "oh, so taxing youhavenoidea."

Oh, really? I have no idea? Actually, I do in fact. It's called: you're "vile" and I "hate" you.

Not being one who has ever "dated" in the traditional sense (a.k.a. had consistent romantic interactions with a single boy lasting longer than two weeks), these people unnerved me. Vexed my sensibilities and confirmed for me why men never want to get married, because women are insufferable and refuse to be pleased. "I can only imagine how difficult is must be for you when your [husband, boyfriend] insists on making you [watch Monday night football, pick up his socks, put the lid back on the toothpaste]! HE MUST BE STOPPED." Oh wait, he talks to you regularly and thinks you're pretty even when you're wearing sweats? Yeah . . . eat dirt.

Maybe it's human nature to take things for granted: hot tubs feel lukewarm after a while, cars lose that "brand new" smell, the next and the next season's clothes are what we really need. We want the bigger, the better, the best thing. We begin to accept things as they are, as if this reality is the same reality that has always been and will always be, just as the one before it was.

In short: you become a smug bastard.

We settle our contents down into the package and eventually forget that once upon a time the things we have now were the things we looked at and saw in other people, and wished we could've been a part of. And that is what makes those I'm-now-attached-so-suddenly-everything-about-single-life-was-bliss people so unbearable: having the good and the bad is better than not having it at all to someone in whose reality that doesn't exist—there are loads of people who would gladly take the bad for even just a shot at the good.

And it wouldn't kill you (read: me) to realize it.

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oh, tim

I've mentioned this before, but no column(ist) has given me greater pleasure as of late than Tim Kreider.

He pains me, part I:

Young adulthood is an anomalous time in people’s lives; they’re as unlike themselves as they’re ever going to be, experimenting with substances and sex, ideology and religion, trying on different identities before their personalities immutably set. Some people flirt briefly with being freethinking bohemians before becoming their parents.

He double pains me, part II:

What they also can’t imagine is having too much time on your hands, being unable to fill the hours, having to just sit and stare at the emptiness at the center of your life.

He triple pains me and causes a quiet weep, part III:

Like everyone, I’ve seen some marriages in which I would discreetly hang myself within 12 hours, but others have given me cause to envy their intimacy, loyalty, and irreplaceable decades of invested history. [Note to all my married friends: your marriage is one of the latter.] Though one of those friends cautioned me against idealizing: 'It’s not as if being married means you’re any less alone.'

He reads into my soul and causes a convulsant weep, part IV:

The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control. In his novel about marriage, “Light Years,” James Salter writes: 'For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.' Watching our peers’ lives is the closest we can come to a glimpse of the parallel universes in which we didn’t ruin that relationship years ago, or got that job we applied for, or got on that plane after all.

Just read the article; I'll even leave you the best part for last.

Here.

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born for the sprint

In re: my ever occurring foray into the world of adulthood, I've come to a certain conclusion. It seems I've been coming to a lot of conclusions lately, and if you've kept up, you've probably noticed the strokes of insight sticking around for about a day, before floating off into the ether to the Place Where All of Sarah's Epiphanies and Resolutions Go to Die.

This one, though, this one might just stick around.

It goes like this: I've never been much of a long-term thinker.

(Don't balk; I'm getting to it.)

I've never been much of a long-term thinker, says the girl who had brochures from Ivy League colleges in dresser drawers stuffed to the gills. The papers, they were everywhere.

So, I may have been a long-term thinker (aside: I keep typing thinking instead of thinker. problem.) in the most technical of terms, but when it comes down to the bares bones of it, my motivation exists in much shorter, much more sprint-like derivations.

Which is to say: I can really only care about what's happening right now.

You're thinking this is normal, that this is why people break up their larger aspirations into smaller, more manageable chunks to keep them from losing sight of the end goal. And I'm sure that is what "people" do. Heck, I'm sure there are scores of people who lives their lives that way, but I'm not in that group and, even for all my years of archiving brochures, I didn't end up going to an Ivy League school. Do you see what I'm saying?

Ignoring the obvious ramifications, it means that a lot of the areas in which I ought to really be employing a long-term strategy for are treated as fleeting states of being (e.g. almost anything in life that matters). Don't get me wrong, I can worry with the best of them. I can prematurely bite my fingernails down to the bed and pace a bedroom and feel nauseated at the very notion that ONE DAY I MIGHT HAVE TO START WORRYING ABOUT GRAY HAIR, AND WHAT WILL I DO THEN?!?!

In this state of temporariness, patience doesn't exist, and neither do foresight or forethought or anything that you could really designate as involving me thinking things through beforehand in a rational way. I am 24 years old. My gray hair is a little bit of a ways off.

For even further proof, why would I be concerned about kissing a boy before we even went on a first date when I wasn't planning on ending up dating him anyway? and really only kissed him in the first place because he was there and so was I and he was looking real good? even though it would mean that we'd have skipped all the way to the good parts before the (much-needed) formalities?

Exactly. I wouldn't.

In conclusion, I will thoroughly think through (and worry myself to an ulcer-generating anxiety attack) over my eventual aging, but the possible results of kissing a boy who is in my ward on a whim because I feel like it?

Not necessary.

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chumps

Over a triple-date dinner (don't even get me started) made entirely by and served by B-o-b (seriously. don't get me started) a few weeks ago, Emiley and I had one of those is-this-really-our-lives-because-wow-we've-become-everything-we-hate sort of moments.

I mean, a triple date for pete's sake? My inborn cynicism meter was hovering dangerously over zero, and teasing me sporadically by going into the negative whenever the words "honey" or "babe" were tossed around casually. Triple dates are for losers and squares and cheesy coeds. And we, my friends, are none of those.

That being said, Bob made dinner, like all of it, and I'm not sure if Em or I was more interested in picking him up and taking him home in our pocket. Mostly we were just legitimately creeped out by him, as we usually are—a boy who makes dinner and doesn't let his girlfriend help at all deserves to be leered at, and then poked sporadically to see how he'll respond. He might not be human.

I've been having all kinds of these moments lately: moments when I realize I may or may not have just said/done/thought something that Em, Brooke, Jack, and I would've privately (or maybe publicly. whatever.) mocked not 6 months ago. In short: I've become a monster.

Nothing has made this sad fact (you know, the fact that I've become about as legit as a wet noodle) more apparent to me than this 10-day separation from Bob. I dropped him off bright and early at the airport at 5:35 a.m. nine days ago, and by noon was telling people I barely missed him at all! This would be a breeze! By 2:00 p.m., I was weeping. (exaggeration. almost.)

I've even developed certain humiliating behaviors that really ought to only be documented here, such as:

1. A website that displays the time in Tokyo may or may not have been on my screen at all hours of the day (pathetic.)
2. The ridiculously detailed itinerary Bob sent me from his teacher was also used to determine what he was doing at any given time (wow. that's a low point. even for me.)
3. Past emails and gchats were read and reread at an alarming rate. (offensive.)
4. A 5-minutes too late near-encounter resulted in tears when I realized I could've been talking to him on gchat. (*speechless. there are no words.)
5. An even stronger than usual desire to sleep inordinate amounts so as to pass the time from now until when his plane lands tomorrow. (that seems pretty normal, actually.)

In conclusion?

I'm a chump. A has-been. A sappy, syrupy, sugary sweet might-as-well-be-a-coed.

But at least Em is with me on this. You can thank me later, Em.

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orrrr....

. . . I could probably just suck it up and be grateful that I have a job at all. Especially when many of my comrades aren't so lucky.

Yeah. Sorry about that, universe.

(I love you, Jim.)

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beating a dead horse. a very dead one.

I never knew what was about to hit me when my friend Jackie gave me The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm. The title is kitschy. The back promo text reads:

The fiftieth anniversary edition of the ground-breaking international bestseller that has shown millions of readers how to achieve rich, productive lives by developing their hidden capacities for love.

Hidden capacities for love? 


*awkward pause.

"Thank you?" I may have said, reluctantly. How dare she. What was she trying to say?! That I'm not good at loving things? Hello! You don't even want to know how many *NSYNC concerts this pre-teen went to. That I'm not good at loving people? Don't even consider asking me the names of all the boys I've fancied since kindergarten, because that list is long and tiresome. And three hours later you'll be looking for someone to blame.

However, Jack assured me it wasn't a personal affront, and instead a sort of an education for me into the mind of Mr. Fromm.

All of this is a very convoluted (and admittedly dramatized) way of passing on that little gift Jackie gave to me, to all of you.

In short, The Art of Loving pains me. As in, it took me a month to read it the first time because Erich's words were piercing off the pages like laser beams into my soul, and it was, in a word, . . . uncomfortable. He mocked me. Made an absolute fool of me and my so-called "love" of *NSYNC. That was child's play. And as I picked up the book again during my work-place regulated 30-minute lunch break *ahem, he slayed me again.

I mean it. Read this book.

In addition to conformity as a way to relive the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and of the pleasure routine. Man becomes a "nine to fiver," he is part of the labor force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organization of the work; there is even little difference between those high up on the ladder and those on the bottom. They all perform tasks prescribed by the whole structure of the organization, at a prescribed speed, and in a prescribed manner. Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction.
. . . From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening—all activities are routinized, and prefabricated. How should a man caught in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and of separateness?" (p. 16)

Amen, Erich. Amen.

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