i have a little over three weeks left to go before i fly north, and i've officially started my hunt for a home in new york city. it's something everyone should do once: try to find a decent, affordable place to live in new york. sort through all of the offers to sleep in the living room, or worse, in the same bed. dodge other-shoes-dropping like "railroad apartment," "no window," and "i hope you like cats." often, the craigslist post from your potential roommate will tip you off if this is someone who might end up eating all your food, smoking crack in the living room, or walking in on you in the shower a few too many times to get away with calling it an "accident." you start to get an ear for it.
i suppose this is universal. while i had extraordinary luck in finding a place in melbourne (and a flatmate i would marry), i think we've all experienced at least once the terror of realizing how many headcases are looking for someone to sleep in their spare bedroom.
but i think anyone who's done the apartment hunt in new york can agree that the sheer volume of people, and the general level of insanity present in the city, yields a higher rate of fearing for your life while getting a tour of the place.
to say nothing of the job hunt. while the process of getting employment in melbourne was "let's throw shit on the wall and see what sticks," the process of getting employment in new york is like "let's throw shit in the fan and see what doesn't come back to hit me in the face." i have started tugging at the connections i have in the city, but i haven't quite leapt into the hunt yet. maybe it's denial, but i keep expecting, perhaps after all the bullshit in finding a job here, that i'll get back to new york and ease right into something in the first week. i'd like to think life will reward me at some point for my troubles.
obviously, i am looking ahead and always keeping at least one eye on post-february 15th life, but mostly because i'm not doing a hell of a lot here. and that's kind of by choice. i could have kept working a few more weeks. i could be out absorbing everything there is to absorb in melbourne, so i can toddle home overstuffed with stories and pictures and experiences.
but for once, i want to be allowed to do absolutely nothing. i'd like to think that's a genuine feeling, and not just laziness or some sort of strange depression about being so groundless and purposeless setting in. essentially, i think i'm relaxing, but the more i think about it, the more i worry that i'm not relaxing. and i think it's quite obvious the snake begins to devour its tail here.
i go to the gym and go to yoga and go to the beach and read and i think i will be writing more, i'm getting my inspiration back. i finished "prozac nation" and found it entirely depressing. i'm going away for the weekend, where i have no intention of doing much of anything other than more reading, sitting on the beach, and not having a single responsibility.
i miss having a life though. i know australia will go down as this experience i didn't appreciate as much as i should have at the time, but to be honest, i don't even think i care anymore. who's to say what i was supposed to do here? when people ask me now why i came to australia, i laugh and say, "oh, i don't know!" and that's that.
you can get caught up in owing people a good story about your life. that dinner party panic of "what will i talk about with strangers?" the truth of the matter is that if you just told people, "i just hung out," they'd accept it. they'd still be a little jealous, because i think we all wonder what it's like to have no accountability in the day to day workings of life. so long as i pay my rent and don't push anyone in front of a bus, i'm basically free to roam. to go from a life in new york where thousands and thousands of dollars in advertising money relied on me getting my shit together every day, to a life where i could lay on my bedroom floor all day and not make a huge dent in the world, is a lucky opportunity really.
but i miss being relied on, to be honest. it's all fine and good to lay on your bedroom floor all day, except it gets incredibly boring. maybe that's my bigger concern. not that i'm not relaxing, but that i'm getting bored of relaxing. you get hungry for a little bit of stress. the only thing i need to do today is go to yoga at 7:45. or maybe 6. that's the big decision i need to make. i should also probably go to the supermarket and do some laundry. i ought to finally get back to work on my play. but it's a quarter to noon on a friday right now, and if instead i thought, "nah, i'm going to youtube movie trailers for three hours and then order chinese food," that would be okay too.
new york would hardly recognize me.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
and panel by panel and piece by piece this all fits together but its not what you think
where have i been?
no "new years resolution" post? no reflection on where i was a year ago, as 2007, a year that was the rockiest of roads, finally came to a close? no thoughts on how 2008 had panned out, how it peaked mid-year like a heartbeat after something of an across-the-board flatlining (how wonderfully melodramatic! i'll explain why in a moment) before what was unfortunately a total heart attack in the second half of the year? (really? yeah, maybe a little bit) no thoughts on what 2009 could bring? (because it's gonna be a really interesting year, i can tell you that)
i guess not.
well, to sum it up, i was in new york last year thinking, "i don't know how much more of this i can bear," but with nowhere to go, i just threw myself into my vices and managed to distract myself a little bit longer. this year, i was in australia thinking, "i don't know how much more of this i can bear," and secretly, i knew that in fact i was going somewhere else soon. as for those vices...well, other than a couple civilized glasses of champagne, they were nowhere to be found.
okay, maybe that's not fair to australia. let me cut to the chase, and then explain: i'm leaving. it's official. and as i had flirted with originally, i'll be leaving on february 15th. (i'm very particular about dates.) i know maybe this should be announced with a bit more fanfare, but the fact of the matter is, i'm torn on how i should act about it. to set the record straight, this is not because i can't bear to be in australia anymore. it's the opposite. i want to be back in new york. six of one, half a dozen of the other? not so much.
there's a certain guilt, there's always been a certain guilt, about volleying between australia and new york. when i was leaving last year, i was excited to come over and reconnect with old friends, make new ones, experience a whole other version of my own life, etc. and so forth. but by choosing australia, i was not choosing to stay in new york, to stay with the friends i'd made, the life i'd created, the possibilities of my future there at that time. the day i told my boss i was quitting, i remembered recently, was the same day she was broaching the topic of "where do you want to go from here?" and what my next steps would be in the company. our conversation essentially went like this:
"where do you want to go from here?"
"i'm leaving."
"oh."
and we've been through it all before, the scores of fantastic people i had to say goodbye to, the way the glue in my life had finally dried and everything had really, truly, come together, all the romance of july. going to australia went from the easiest rabbit hole to slip down to a sort of obstacle course to the other side.
so leaving australia means i'm choosing new york again. and i'll admit, i'm entirely excited about going back. going home. i've missed new york since the day i got here, which is like a dirty little secret, i know, but i think you can miss one thing and still experience another fully. but it's hard to be so outwardly excited here, when it feels like you're dumping everyone and saying, "it's not you, it's me. and it's a little bit you. but it's mostly me with you."
anyway, i'm trying to lighten up a little, because i know things can get heavy sometimes on this blog (i have been told directly, this is not just me judging me), but that's been slightly hampered by my latest endeavor in reading, elizabeth wurtzel's "prozac nation," a memoir about, as she puts it, being "young and depressed in america." it's basically like the beginning of "eat, pray, love," where liz gilbert loses her shit over and over and can not pull it together no matter what she does or who she fucks, except, so far, halfway through the book, there is no petition, no food fest in italy, yoga in india, or may-december canoodling with a hot brazilian sugar daddy in bali. the book literally starts with her crying on the bathroom floor, but unlike liz gilbert, she never gets up.
now, those who know me, or even read this blog every once in a while (even just skimming the paragraphs for anything interesting to jump in on) know that i love crying on the bathroom floor, crying in the supermarket, crying on public transportation, crying just about anywhere. not me literally--i can't cry in front of people--but i love reading about it, watching it in a movie, hearing a story about it. i take heart that oscar-nominee julianne moore (the nom gives her street cred, y'know?), in an interview about a classic "women losing their shit" movie, "the hours," said something along the lines of, "i hate having to cry in movies. but i'll run to a movie with women crying in it." amen, jules.
but lizzy wurtzel needs to get her shit together.
i am only halfway through, but this is already the singlemost melodramatic book i have ever read. she doesn't just cry in this book; she wails, sobs, bawls, heaves on the floor in great, aching distress. her sobs can crescendo into screams; in one key scene, a fight with her mother descends into something that would put greek tragedy to shame for not reaching the trenches of despair that these two women hit. the book is crying scene after crying scene, often accompanied by cheap booze, hard drugs, and terrible decisions made the night before, but really, anything can make this girl cry.
it amazes me that anyone would call "eat, pray, love" self-indulgent. liz gilbert may spend night after night crying on the bathroom floor, but she manages to step back and say, "okay, i know, i'm totally losing my shit, it's kind of bananas, but bear with me, okay?" she has a sense of humor about it all. once again, i think she and i are the same woman, because we both have a habit of romanticizing the past, even if it was pretty terrible.
but ms. wurtzel is a mess, and if elizabeth gilbert and i had a tree house, we would not let her in.
the point of all this, other than that i just wanted to talk about "prozac nation" for a while, and will probably continue to do so in future posts, is that i'm making efforts these days to not be that mordant. in fact, that was my new year's resolution, in case you were wondering. it came to me only minutes before midnight, as i sipped champagne and thought, "yeesh, i can't believe i don't have a resolution. not even to lose weight!" i stopped trying to think of one, actually, gave in and thought, "ah, fuck it, i don't need a promise i won't keep." it slid into my mind quite gently, though, and i said, "well, okay, that i could do."
my resolution picked me.
"be happier."
i think going back to new york on february 15th is a big step towards that resolution. i think australia revealed to me to a lot of ways in which i'm not happier, in which i don't pursue my happiness more. of course, these revelations, in and of themselves, were somewhat unhappy, but totally invaluable. michael said recently, "i haven't been keeping up with your blog. it's just been all 'i don't like melbourne' lately." and i thought, "yeesh, maybe, yeah."
well, let it be known, i don't hate melbourne. i just fucking love new york. and when you know you've got true love, you don't let 10,000 measly miles stand in your way of being together. you do what you have to do to be happy.
to be happier.
no "new years resolution" post? no reflection on where i was a year ago, as 2007, a year that was the rockiest of roads, finally came to a close? no thoughts on how 2008 had panned out, how it peaked mid-year like a heartbeat after something of an across-the-board flatlining (how wonderfully melodramatic! i'll explain why in a moment) before what was unfortunately a total heart attack in the second half of the year? (really? yeah, maybe a little bit) no thoughts on what 2009 could bring? (because it's gonna be a really interesting year, i can tell you that)
i guess not.
well, to sum it up, i was in new york last year thinking, "i don't know how much more of this i can bear," but with nowhere to go, i just threw myself into my vices and managed to distract myself a little bit longer. this year, i was in australia thinking, "i don't know how much more of this i can bear," and secretly, i knew that in fact i was going somewhere else soon. as for those vices...well, other than a couple civilized glasses of champagne, they were nowhere to be found.
okay, maybe that's not fair to australia. let me cut to the chase, and then explain: i'm leaving. it's official. and as i had flirted with originally, i'll be leaving on february 15th. (i'm very particular about dates.) i know maybe this should be announced with a bit more fanfare, but the fact of the matter is, i'm torn on how i should act about it. to set the record straight, this is not because i can't bear to be in australia anymore. it's the opposite. i want to be back in new york. six of one, half a dozen of the other? not so much.
there's a certain guilt, there's always been a certain guilt, about volleying between australia and new york. when i was leaving last year, i was excited to come over and reconnect with old friends, make new ones, experience a whole other version of my own life, etc. and so forth. but by choosing australia, i was not choosing to stay in new york, to stay with the friends i'd made, the life i'd created, the possibilities of my future there at that time. the day i told my boss i was quitting, i remembered recently, was the same day she was broaching the topic of "where do you want to go from here?" and what my next steps would be in the company. our conversation essentially went like this:
"where do you want to go from here?"
"i'm leaving."
"oh."
and we've been through it all before, the scores of fantastic people i had to say goodbye to, the way the glue in my life had finally dried and everything had really, truly, come together, all the romance of july. going to australia went from the easiest rabbit hole to slip down to a sort of obstacle course to the other side.
so leaving australia means i'm choosing new york again. and i'll admit, i'm entirely excited about going back. going home. i've missed new york since the day i got here, which is like a dirty little secret, i know, but i think you can miss one thing and still experience another fully. but it's hard to be so outwardly excited here, when it feels like you're dumping everyone and saying, "it's not you, it's me. and it's a little bit you. but it's mostly me with you."
anyway, i'm trying to lighten up a little, because i know things can get heavy sometimes on this blog (i have been told directly, this is not just me judging me), but that's been slightly hampered by my latest endeavor in reading, elizabeth wurtzel's "prozac nation," a memoir about, as she puts it, being "young and depressed in america." it's basically like the beginning of "eat, pray, love," where liz gilbert loses her shit over and over and can not pull it together no matter what she does or who she fucks, except, so far, halfway through the book, there is no petition, no food fest in italy, yoga in india, or may-december canoodling with a hot brazilian sugar daddy in bali. the book literally starts with her crying on the bathroom floor, but unlike liz gilbert, she never gets up.
now, those who know me, or even read this blog every once in a while (even just skimming the paragraphs for anything interesting to jump in on) know that i love crying on the bathroom floor, crying in the supermarket, crying on public transportation, crying just about anywhere. not me literally--i can't cry in front of people--but i love reading about it, watching it in a movie, hearing a story about it. i take heart that oscar-nominee julianne moore (the nom gives her street cred, y'know?), in an interview about a classic "women losing their shit" movie, "the hours," said something along the lines of, "i hate having to cry in movies. but i'll run to a movie with women crying in it." amen, jules.
but lizzy wurtzel needs to get her shit together.
i am only halfway through, but this is already the singlemost melodramatic book i have ever read. she doesn't just cry in this book; she wails, sobs, bawls, heaves on the floor in great, aching distress. her sobs can crescendo into screams; in one key scene, a fight with her mother descends into something that would put greek tragedy to shame for not reaching the trenches of despair that these two women hit. the book is crying scene after crying scene, often accompanied by cheap booze, hard drugs, and terrible decisions made the night before, but really, anything can make this girl cry.
it amazes me that anyone would call "eat, pray, love" self-indulgent. liz gilbert may spend night after night crying on the bathroom floor, but she manages to step back and say, "okay, i know, i'm totally losing my shit, it's kind of bananas, but bear with me, okay?" she has a sense of humor about it all. once again, i think she and i are the same woman, because we both have a habit of romanticizing the past, even if it was pretty terrible.
but ms. wurtzel is a mess, and if elizabeth gilbert and i had a tree house, we would not let her in.
the point of all this, other than that i just wanted to talk about "prozac nation" for a while, and will probably continue to do so in future posts, is that i'm making efforts these days to not be that mordant. in fact, that was my new year's resolution, in case you were wondering. it came to me only minutes before midnight, as i sipped champagne and thought, "yeesh, i can't believe i don't have a resolution. not even to lose weight!" i stopped trying to think of one, actually, gave in and thought, "ah, fuck it, i don't need a promise i won't keep." it slid into my mind quite gently, though, and i said, "well, okay, that i could do."
my resolution picked me.
"be happier."
i think going back to new york on february 15th is a big step towards that resolution. i think australia revealed to me to a lot of ways in which i'm not happier, in which i don't pursue my happiness more. of course, these revelations, in and of themselves, were somewhat unhappy, but totally invaluable. michael said recently, "i haven't been keeping up with your blog. it's just been all 'i don't like melbourne' lately." and i thought, "yeesh, maybe, yeah."
well, let it be known, i don't hate melbourne. i just fucking love new york. and when you know you've got true love, you don't let 10,000 measly miles stand in your way of being together. you do what you have to do to be happy.
to be happier.
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