July 27, 2004

Microcosmic

My city's overrun with dignitaries and celebrities and people out having a good time. Good for them. I'm working a more-than-full week and not getting invited to any of this. Kind of microcosmic.

Anyway, I haven't had a lot to say this week (as you may have noticed). Part of it is being miffed that no one's discovered my latent genius and asked me to some fancy party (or, for that matter, much of anything else). Part of it is simple fatigue, part is because I actually have been out doing stuff. V-Bunny wrote a great review of the bookstore's event last night - it's the only thing I had VIP access to all week, and I'm not kidding - we did math yesterday and calculated that people were asking us for tickets literally every 90 seconds. If someone were to go back in time and knock off Alexander Graham Bell, I for one wouldn't complain.

And, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm also suffering from the delayed effects of Black Wednesday. I figured I'd have a fullblown anxiety attack and mid(?)life crisis when I turned 30; instead it's 3 months late and came bearing interest. Waah. Check out Strindberg and Helium for a pretty good simulation of what I must sound like these days (if I were accompanied by a giddy pink balloon everywhere I went). Laurie sent me that a few weeks ago, along with Rock Paper Saddam!, maybe the funniest thing I've ever seen on the internet. Thanks, Laurie.

Comments

Your mistake is in waiting to be invited. Your genius alone, and a little persistence, will get you in, so long as you put on a tie. There's so much free booze in this town right now that not exploiting it is flat-out negligence. You can do it, you must do it, you will do it.

Posted by: Pete at July 28, 2004 01:08 PM

And incidentally, for me it was not for a good four months, when the dark dead of winter had me swimming in my thoughts, and I'm not sure I'm completely over it or ever will be, but I came away realizing, more or less, that things were only bad if I thought about them. Yes, that sounds like a mire of avoidance, and perhaps it is to an extent (see above about not being completely over it). But I finally found my way out of it by realizing that most of what upset me was comparing this or that to externalities. Yeah, I'd like to be further along in lots of ways, and I don't know exactly how to fix that. But I do know how not to fix that, and that's using everyone and everything to demonstrate to myself what I'm not. Stripped of all external benchmarks, I'm pretty happy with myself. I don't deny for a second that it's really, really hard to look at things independently of what and where you think you should be, but tacky as it may sound, it's the internal benchmarks that matter. For what it's worth.

Posted by: Pete at July 28, 2004 01:28 PM

Thanks, Pete. It's not really so much that I'm bummed because I'm not realizing some random external measure of success (whatever that may be) - it's more like this: (and you may have read me go on about this on mu actual birthday) where I am at 30 is not really what I envisioned myself at 20, and I'd like to have some positive feelings that I won't feel the same way at 40.

Moment to moment, I'm happy enough - I'm totally stressed at work, for instance, but there are enough moments during the course of the day that make it bearable. But my big problem is the number of mornings I wake up, totally and painfully aware that the entire day is about to go by without any moment of great joy or transcendence or something happening that makes me truly glad I was alive on that particular day. I know, that's life. I can still hope (right?) that something like that may happen one of these days, but that hope is kind of flickering. 30 may be too old to think I have unlimited possibilites, but it's still too young for me to become a completely jaded and joyless old man. So I gotta deal with it.

Posted by: Michael at July 28, 2004 09:11 PM

As Howard Dean would say ... "You have the power."

Sorry. I couldn't resist. ;)

But it is kinda true.

Posted by: Sooz at July 29, 2004 04:25 AM

Post a comment