[ordered chaos 9]

||Life After College:  Year 2 - Corporate Hell

 

(I am)
..22 years old  
..in New York
 
(Soundbite) || 08.04.03
..Goldfly.Guster
 
(nightstand)
(x)Prelude to Foundation
:: by Isaac Asimov
(x)Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix
:: by J.K. Rowling
(x)Bird by Bird
:: by Ann Lamott
(x)Forward the Foundation
:: by Isaac Asimov
(3.9.03-?)One Hundred Years of Solitude
:: by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(x)Foundation's Edge
:: by Isaac Asimov
(x)Small Wonder
:: by Barbara Kingsolver
(x)Man from Mundania
:: by Piers Anthony
(x)Second Foundation
:: by Isaac Asimov
(x)Daughter of Fortune
:: by Isabel Allende
(x)Foundation and Empire
:: by Asimov
(x)Ender's Game
:: by Orson Scott Card
(x)Blindness
:: by Jose Saramago
(x)A Clockwork Orange
:: by Anthony Burgess
(x)Foundation
:: by Asimov
(x)The Eyre Affair
:: by Jasper Fforde
(x)Immortality
:: by Milan Kundera
(x)In Our Strange Gardens
:: by Michael Quint
(x)Hexwood
:: by Diana Wynne Jones
(x)East of Eden
:: by John Steinbeck
(x)Future Homemakers of America
:: by Laurie Graham
(x)Bel Canto
:: by Ann Patchett
(x)DragonLance Chronicles
:: by Margaret Weis
(x)Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
:: by Dai Sijie
 
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(blog this!)
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awkward pirouettes
braindroppings:songwriter
natti
lchau
 
(archives)
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(Comments)
05.14.03
We're wireless!!
11.21.02
Blog moved from Tripod to BlogSpot. Three cheers for Verizon webspace!
9.24.02
Archives moved to main page.
9.07.02
Internet access available at new apt.!
4.14.02
Due to popular demand,
the comments section
has been re-instated.
 
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad enough to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved... The ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."

    -Jack Kerouac

[Tuesday, December 31, 2002]

Latent Hormones.

I think I filled out. I finally hit the last half of puberty. Either that, or I've just gained a whole lot of weight.

I was rummaging through my closet looking for something to wear on New Year's. Figuring out if I had to go shopping tomorrow. Fashion-show-in-progress. I finally pulled out a little black number that I bought years ago, but have never worn. I bought it my sophomore year of college. I never wore it because it was slightly too big for me. It drooped a bit, and hung in the hip area because I didn't quite fill it out. The bust area was okay if I stuffed it a little. But, since I was running out of options, I tried it on again anyways. And it fit. Not only does it fit, but it's a bit hard to breathe in it when I sit down. When in the world did this happen? I know my bra size hasn't changed. Have I really gained that much weight since sophomore year of college? Do people still develop into their 20's? Should I be mourning over the loss of my girlish figure? Too bad I still look flat in it though. I suppose one can't ask for too much.

posted by ink| 5:09 AM |
[Sunday, December 29, 2002]

Post-Date Rehash.

My Thoughts.
In the car: My hands smell like oranges.
At the coffeeshop: That chai tea really didn't agree with me.
At the coffeeshop part 2: I have to pee. Again. I bet he's labeled me "Small Bladder Woman" in his head.
At the coffeeshop part 3: "Yeah, my friend and I played DDR". "Dungeons and Dragons?" "...Dance Dance Revolution" Oh no, I've given my inner geek away.
At the coffeeshop part 4: Am I talking too much? I think I'm talking too much.
At the movies - Gangs of New York: Is he trying to hold my hand? Am I supposed to make it readily available to him? But I ALWAYS watch movies with my hands folded!
At the movies part 2: Am I supposed to read his body language? His legs are crossed away from me. That means "bad" according to Cosmo, I think...
At the movies part 3: How much longer is this movie?
In the parked car at my house: Okay, this is awkward. Make a joke, quick.
In the parked car at my house part 2: Bad joke. Way to remind him that he's younger. He's got hold of my fingers. What do I do?
In the parked car at my house part 3: He's not letting go of my hand and he's giving me The Look. I think he wants to kiss me.
In the parked car at my house part 4: Still holding my hand. Now we're laughing uncomfortably at each other. How do normal girls handle this?
In the parked car at my house part 5: Still holding my hand. Awkward moment is now prolonged beyond saving. Get out of there, quick. Evacuate evacuate!
Back home: Brother is sleeping. Phew, he doesn't know how late I got back.
Back home part 2: Gosh, does Sig feel rejected? I hope he doesn't. It's not his fault. I completely flaked.
Back home part 3: Poor guy. He was probably trying to work up his courage. When given enough time, I freak out without fail and hightail it. Must work on that.
Back home part 4: What is this? My friend is saying I'm supposed to call him tomorrow. Is there dating protocol I'm not aware of?
Back home part 5: Ah well, at least there's no guilt. I can in good conscience tell my brother that nothing happened and let his mind rest.
Back home part 6: Well, at least I made it without any major blunders. Chalk it up on the board. 1. One good date.

"Good" defined as the following:
1) I was not told that I look like I have two left feet.
2) The date doesn't say that he's not attracted to girls like me.
3) I don't say anything completely idiotic.

As all of the above happened on dates within the past few months, I think with this most recent date, I can officially say that I'm improving. The score - bad dates to good dates: 3 to 1. The good dates are starting a comeback!

posted by ink| 3:18 AM |
[Saturday, December 28, 2002]

Panties, Christmas, and Dates.

Today's been a hectic day full of minor annoyances. I woke up this morning, showered, and went digging through my suitcase for something suitable to wear. Lo and behold, there they were. My Christmas tree panties. Every year, I intend to don the Christmas tree panties on Christmas, but somehow, the panties thwart my will again and again. They only like to be worn on completely inappropriate days. Like in the middle of May. I went looking for them on Christmas morning and decided that they were either lost, or I'd left them behind in New York somehow. I resigned myself to a day of normal panties. But there they were this morning. Staring at me. And laughing. I narrowed my eyes and purposely reached past them to pick another pair of panties to wear today. An eye for an eye buster!

Tonight's been a hectic night full of busy-ness and nothing remotely like relaxation. I got my hair cut and fielded a phone call on the drive home from my friend Pooh Bear, who is trapped in the middle of a dramatic love triangle down in DC. The call went on after dinner, until I received a call from Sig. I have a date at 8:15. My brother is not a happy camper. He's planted in front of the television looking warlike and gloomy at the same time. I feel vaguely guilty. I offered to renege on the date, but he shook his head and said "Do whatever you want." I hate statements like that. It's a no-win situation. So, I looked through my suitcase to find absolutely nothing appropriate to wear. After all, when you're leaving New York to spend a week at home in the boonies of South Jersey with your family, you hardly think to pack party-wear. Or anything remotely date-like. Great. I made the best with what I had. A baby blue turtleneck. A long sleeved baby blue turtleneck. Let's brand the word "nun" across my forehead. But I suppose it will please my brother to see that every inch of skin below my chin is covered.

I decided that nothing will make him happy tonight. Whether I go or not, he's going to be grouchy. I consider my turtleneck a homage to him. A token made in deference of his disapproval. Although it still strikes me as ludicrous that I have to ask permission from my younger brother to go on a date.

posted by ink| 8:10 PM |

Hickory Dickory Dock. The mouse ran up the clock.

Either my biological clock is ticking, or I've come to terms with my inner woman.

For a long time, I was anti-marriage, anti-kids, and most of all, anti-baby. I couldn't think of anything more terrifying than the thought of squeezing something the size of a watermelon out a hole the size of a pea. I couldn't think of anything worse than having an entire human being ripped from my body. Besides, to blow up like that? Carry an extra 15 pounds around my middle and deal with being bloated and moody? No thanks. That's like going through a 9 month long PMS period. But without the period.

I'm still terrified of childbirth. But I'm starting to think that the rest of it might not be that bad. Not getting my period for 9 months would be a welcome relief. And pregnancy is always a good excuse for everything, ranging from eating massive amounts to ordering your husband around. The catalyst for all this is age. And I don't mean the fact that I'm getting old, I mean the fact that I'm at an age where my friends are getting married, I now know pregnant people, and I'm starting to attend baby showers. I'll admit it. I -love- baby showers. It's not that I love the shower itself, I just love having an excuse to buy little clothing. It's like having all the perks of having a baby, without the actual baby. Shopping at Gap Kids makes me drool. Everything there is -so- cute it makes me want to run out and get knocked up right away.

It almost makes me want to have a baby. Almost. I think I want a baby out of curiosity more than anything else. To see what it would look like. Genetics is a funny thing. It's like a grab-bag of traits. You reach blindly into the bag and pull out a baby. In my family, my brother Y. and my dad look like each other. I look nothing like either parent. Strangely enough though, my brother and I have a very strong family resemblance. We're told on a regular basis that we look -exactly- alike. We've been asked if we're twins. However, when I point out that if you actually -look- at both of us and at our features - we look nothing alike, it freaks everyone out.

Ever since we were little when people first started telling us we looked alike, my brother and I stared at our faces side-by-side in the mirror. We did a feature-by-feature comparison. Eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, facial structure. Not one bit was similar. In fact, we were incredibly distinct in every way. He had a square face, mine was more long. His eyes are much smaller and shaped differently and his nose was wider. And thank God I don't have his lips. What I boiled it down to was ratios. There has to be -something- that makes everyone think we look alike. I decided that if we inherited anything from our shared set of parents, it has to be the ratio of feature spacing.

I know that we carry ourselves the same way. We have the same sort of walk. We move similarly. We have the same nervous habits. The same way of leaning back in the chair. The same smile that shows too much gum. The same feeling about us. In Chinese, it's translated directly as "smell". We have the same "smell" about us. Aura I suppose you could say if you want to get New Age-y. When I put my legs up on the wall, my calves look weirdly familiar. The shape of them, the way the shin bone is, plus a lot more hair and muscle, and you've got my brother's calves. We're built the same way. Long and lanky and thin. Especially in the arms. Long torsos, belly buttons that are placed a bit on the high side, making it hard for us to find pants. Everything looks like low-riders on us.

We inherited the intangibles. I find it fascinating that people can pick up on the intangibles so quickly. Within minutes, I'll get a comment about my brother looking like me. No one ever really notices that we look nothing alike unless we point it out. I find it interesting that people catch on to the "feeling" about us so accurately. Old high school teachers could pick out that he was my brother even before he gave them his name. And he's 5 years younger than me in school.

Genetics as a science has such an emphasis on physical traits that are measurable. It makes me wonder whether the intangibles are truly due to genetics, or whether they're due to environment. Are you a fan of nature or nurture?

posted by ink| 2:40 AM |
[Friday, December 27, 2002]

The Two Towers

I fell asleep last night writing my impressions of the LOTR movie in my journal. I woke up with the journal still open on the pillow beside me, and a whole lot of pen marks on my pajama shirt from sleeping on top of my pen. I re-read it with interest:

I watched Two Towers tonight. I'm not sure what my opinion of it is from a Tolkien fan perspective since I can't seem to keep all three books straight in my head anyways. Portions of book two that I thought were missing from the movie ended up really being a part of book 3. I'm a fan of the Tolkien story. Not necessarily of the books. I'll have to wait for the last of the trilogy before I can piece together what was really missing from the movie. As a piece of artwork however, Two Towers was wonderful. I could re-watch it over and over again. It's a feast for the eyes to drink in, all the beauty of the landscape, all the glory, all the detail. This is definitely a movie that needs to be seen on the large screen. I felt like a little kid again. I could feel my eyes widen and my chest tighten up as I finally saw what Isengard looked like. The ents are just how I imagined them. And I'm glad they didn't make Eowen a vixen of a girl. She was just right. The only casting issue I have is with Liv Tyler as Arwen. However, like multitudes of girls across the country, I love the casting of Legolas. Although how the casting directors could've possibly seen Legolas in the mohawked mustache'd Orlando Bloom is beyond me. I suppose that's why they're casting directors and I'm not.

Watching Two Towers made me see motifs that I had missed while reading it. Tolkien seemed to have a distinct anti-technology leaning, considering that Isengard employed nuts and bolts and made everything of metal. Whereas the protagonists were people of the "old ways", tilling the earth, hiding in a fortress made of rock. People like the ents who eventually used water, a force of nature to destroy it all. Saruman, quite frankly, reminded me a bit of Hitler as well when he stood on the balcony of his Isengard and looked out on the tens of thousands that were to be deployed to Helmsdeep. Besides these interesting tidbits that made themselves into my brain during the movie, overall, it was a movie for the senses. It pleased the eye, it pleased the ear with the wonderful music, and it pleased the senses that lay inside - the emotions.

I love movies like LOTR that feature man struggling valiantly against all odds. I could feel my breath catch in my throat everytime they showed the men riding off to war, even despite my feminist leanings. How wonderfully sexy. How wonderful men are. It made me yearn for such men. Useless really, since men in the 21st century hardly ride off to war anymore. Flying off in a plane is more likely, and half as romantic, if even. And the ones who do go off to war only come back to kill their wives in Fort Bragg.

It made me think, who would be the 21st century equivalent to these men? These valiant leaders? Who has that sort of nobility, pride, and sense of morality these days? I was hard pressed to think of one person. It hardly seems fair to cast Bill Gates as the King Theoden of the 21st century. Although Bush could easily parallel Sauron since the U.S. tries to take over everything, we have all the power, and we try to overrun small countries like Rohan and Gondor with our mighty armies. I tried to think of any modern day Aragorns. Did I know any? And if I did, could I somehow maneuver myself into dating him? How do you find the man with the dormant Aragorn?

Walking out of the theatre and driving home with my friend to the tunes of rock music felt strangely shallow and unreal. We lead such easy lives compared to the people of those times. Of course there are no Aragorns in the 21st century. Because people with those sorts of traits are -made-. Because there's no one to instill those sorts of values in our kids. Because those sorts of values are stepped on in the real world. In the real world, power and success aren't dependent on your honor and morality. In fact, you're more likely to be successful the less honor and morality you have. Look at our politicians. Look at our corporate ladders, our CEO's. Besides, our times weren't made for these traits. Our times are soft. Even people who may have these traits dormant inside them may never have the opportunity to discover that they exist. Strife brings out honor. War makes heroes. In that sense, perhaps I should feel lucky to have grown up in such times of peace and prosperity. Even if the trade-off is people with less oomph. After all, why would one need oomph if life is good?

Sometimes I wonder, if I had lived back in those times, what would I be? A peasant girl in the village making cow eyes at the butcher's son by the town fountain at the May Day fair? A noblewoman whose marriage is arranged for political and social reasons?

posted by ink| 5:59 PM |
[Wednesday, December 25, 2002]

Every tree grows from an acorn. Or does it?

My heart started to ache today. I had an uncontrollably longing for Britain. Not that I've ever been to Britain. But I went to a private British Catholic school when I was younger, in Milan, Italy. And the essence of being an English schoolchild was pervasive within the grey stone walls of the school.

The Sir James Henderson School.

While sitting in my room, I suddenly got a whiff of the atmosphere of the school, what it felt like to run clattering down the halls, the stone walls and gate as you came into the school. The chapel. Attending assembly in the morning. Learning my prayers. Piano lessons. Playing on the roots of the two huge trees out front. The music room in the attic. The young hippie gal who taught us Beatles songs instead of hymns. The Guy Fawkes bonfire in the front courtyard. Holding a sparkler in my hand. My classmates. Khadine from Malaysia. Thomas O'Connell, my crush, who my mom said looked like a monkey. But all the other little girls liked him too. Camilla and Antonietta, who took ballet with me. Shant, who liked to eat and always got in trouble. Sasha, whose birthday party I sprained my ankle at, trying to bob for apples. David, who had beautiful coloring, black hair and blue blue eyes, but who was prone to fights. Brownies, which I desperately wanted to be in, but wasn't allowed to until I hit fifth form.

I moved away when I was in fourth form. The Chernobyl disaster pretty much ended my dad's career as a nuclear engineer. So my dad's company pulled us back to the U.S. We went from old-world wonder and British private schools.. to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

If we had stayed in Milan, my parents would have sent me to boarding school in Switzerland for high school. At the time, Sir James Henderson only went up to 6th form, and the public schools in Italy were terrible. My life would've been completely different. I would've had a totally different existence.

It's strange how atmospheres and the feelings it evokes in you can suddenly come back at odd moments. Sometimes you catch a whiff of an old boyfriend and it all comes rushing back. Walking through the halls of your old high school brings back the feeling of being an insecure teenager. But now, I just have an ache for the British. I want to go back to Milan and see my old school. See the classrooms. The front courtyard. Go back to where I used to live, and see if Sylvia's family still lives downstairs.

We were the only two kids who lived in our building, Sylvia and I. So of course, we played together everyday, chattering to each other glibly in Italian that now is foreign to my ears. She lived on the first floor, and I lived on the sixth. She went to public school in Italy, and I went to private, but at that age, we didn't really care. Her older brother, Diego, made me read to him once in a while, because he was learning English in high school and he was working on his pronunciation. I'd fidget. I just wanted to play hopscotch with Sylvia. We'd rollerskate in the building lobby, only to be yelled at by the older people who lived there for making marks on the marble floor. We'd buy new balls every week at the supermarket, only to have them pop when they'd land on the rose bushes in front of our building. I remember putting my face to the ball and feeling the cool rush of air against my face as it deflated.

I remember getting off the plane in Chattanooga, and feeling the cool rush of U.S. air as my old life deflated before my eyes. My life would change forever, and I was too young to even realize it.

I wonder how much of it influenced who I am now. After all, I moved away when I was still young, 9 years old. Lux, who lived in Europe her whole life before coming to college in the States, claims she can see an effect. A vague similarity between her European friends and me. Is my lack of embarassment for partial nudity leftover from the swimming lessons I had in Europe, where all the little kids swam topless? From the beaches where women only wear bottoms like men? Is this why holding hands with girls doesn't bother me, because European women do that all the time without considering it lesbian activity? Are my political views influenced by my short stay in Europe? Would my "quirks" be considered normal in the EU? Is this the reason why I don't like sleeping with sheets? Why British magazine articles have a strange familiarity and comfort that American magazines don't?

Exactly how much of your grown self is influenced by your childhood? How much of the root of behavior is planted at a young age?

posted by ink| 2:20 PM |
[Saturday, December 21, 2002]

The importance of being earnest.

I have a fatal attraction to younger men. And losers. In a bar full of college graduates, at any given time, I am guaranteed, one hundred percent, to attract the one guy there who has dropped out of school at least twice. Or, the one guy who is NOT 21 and snuck in on a fake ID. Or, the one guy who is at least a head shorter than me. I danced with a midget once at a bar. I kid you not. Out of the entire group of girls who were dancing together, he made a beeline for me. I danced with him. Even little people deserve to have some fun, but it was semi-awkward. I kept worrying, what if he tries to freak me? Considering that he's about waist-high, that would put his face in a.. um... compromising position.

Do I have the words "Hit on me, I'm easy" branded on my forehead?

On the way home from New York yesterday, I rode in the car with my brother Y, my brother's fraternity big-brother Sig, and Sig's dad. Sig was very cute, very attractive, and very 20. You'd think that I would've learned my lesson after dating my ex-boyfriend who's 1 year younger than me. Do I just have a fatal attraction to younger guys? That could be a problem considering that men mature more slowly than women to begin with. Maturity is -such- an important trait. What is it? Is it the baby face that I like? After much thought, I pinpointed it. Older men tend to hide their feelings more, control them, so you're always guessing. Younger guys seem much more -earnest-. When they like you, you can tell. Perhaps it's from lack of experience or naivete, but that's the appealing quality about them. There's much more a sense of openness. It's not the youth that I like. It's the earnestness. It's so cute.

Regardless, Sig is "forbidden fruit". As soon as we got home, my brother (Y) marched to my room and burst through my door to give me the low-down. I've been strictly banned from going out with Sig, even if it's just for a movie or for Christmas shopping. My brother detected Sig's interest with his paranoid-super-radar. In fact, it sounds like Sig expressed interest in the fact that Y's big sister was around his age, even before I met him in the car. My brother of course, promptly flipped out. Even explaining that I'm hardly interested enough to date Sig seriously, but a movie might be fun, prompted small uproars of minor seismic proportions. In fact, I've been banned from ever going out with any of his older friends. Ever. Considering that he's likely to have many friends between now and the time of his death, that's a pretty large subset of guys that's suddenly unavailable to me, especially since he's only three years younger than me.

That actually poses a serious problem. Now that I'm older, I'm realizing that it's hard to meet people after school is over. Friends-of-friends of friends-of-family is your best bet. It's frightening to think that the pool has shrunk so much. And is shrinking even more now that my brother's placed an embargo against me. It's frightening to think that I'm at the mercy of my friends and their ideas of "blind dates". It's even more frightening to think that I might have to consider the string of foreign medical students my mother keeps bringing home for dinner. I need to ETC - Expand The Circle.

In the interest of ETC'ing, I've decided to make a list of ideal guys for people to keep a watch out for me. It's rather easy. I've only got two. John Cusack. Ed Burns. In the interest of being realistic, I've decided that I'm willing to accept a poor man's version of either of them.

posted by ink| 8:21 AM |
[Tuesday, December 17, 2002]

Pipe dreams.

I had a long talk with my dad today. He lectured me for an hour and a half about career choices. He told me he'd changed his mind. That perhaps he wasn't being fair last time when he had a discussion with me about which career path would provide better "middle management" compensation. He was trying to shove me into law. The assumption was made that I wouldn't make it to the top of the ladder and become CEO or partner. The assumption was made that I would get stuck in middle management. This assumption was made because it was also assumed that I would be a wife and mother. And everyone knows that if you have to leave the office all the time to pick your kids up from school, or stay home because they're sick and you can't find a babysitter, you get stuck in middle management. Sadly enough, it was probably smart of us to make that assumption. I can't see a happy ending to this. I can either focus on my career and gain fulfillment through that, and feel slightly resentful of my job because it makes me a bad mother. Or both ends give a little, my career AND my kids, and then I feel slightly resentful of my kids because they've stunted my career. Or, I could become a housewife and go nutty because I feel like I'm not accomplishing anything. Then I would turn into one of those crazy PTA mothers who organize mega events in order to feel fulfilled and then argue over who encroached on my responsibilities. I bet all those crazy soccer moms are former career women.

But, he told me today that he thinks he was wrong in steering me that way. And that he can't see me sitting at home with the kids, that he thinks my personality is more suited for a career. I told him that I'm pretty positive that business isn't my cup of tea. I feel like I want to do something more substantial with my life. Make a difference somewhere, however small. Challenge myself. My dad told me it was all a fantasy. And that when you get older, it all comes down to the bottom line. Your lovely job won't seem half as lovely anymore when it won't pay for your kid's college tuition. I said I'd take a pay cut if I could find a job that was personally fulfilling. He told me to stop chasing pipe dreams, that it was selfish. How would I explain it to my kids that they can't have new bicycles because although mommy -could- find a job that would give them a better life, she refuses to because she "likes" her current one. Well, when you put it -that- way...

Besides, I've gotten used to living at a certain lifestyle. Despite all its shallow overtones, it's going to be hard to give it all up. All the "substance" jobs don't seem to allow me to keep maintaining what I have now. Substance jobs are jobs that are personally fulfilling. Like being a teacher. Or a social worker. Why can't I have my cake and eat it too?

Why do they bother telling you when you're little that you can do anything you want? When it's not really true? Realistically, you're limited to certain boring lines of work. I wish they'd just told me when I was younger that I can expect to sit in a cubicle, be bored, while making tons of money that I cannot seem to let go of. Because then maybe I wouldn't feel half as disillusioned now. And I wish they hadn't told me that I should be a good person and do good unto others, when in reality, doing good unto others is actually punished in this society. Punished with a lower salary.

My dad is bitter. Bitter because he spent his life challenging himself, learning the new technologies because he was an engineer. And then when it all came down to numbers, he got laid off in the recession of the early 90's. My dad almost cried when I became an engineer in college and followed in his footsteps. My dad doesn't want me to go down the wrong road, chasing after some butterfly fantasy, only to have to turn back and re-do everything. The only way you don't get laid off is if you're a manager. The problem lies in the fact that most engineers don't -want- to be managers. Engineers, by their very nature, like to get their hands into the nitty gritty, not stand at arm's length - "managing". Engineers are the ultimate dreamers. And my dad is the jaded dreamer who woke up.

Sadly enough, the first time I worked my brain since starting work was last week, when me and my unstaffed colleague - S., worked on an email brain teaser together in the office.

"If you have a 3 nugget box, 6 nugget box, and 20 nugget box, what's the largest number of nuggets you can have that cannot be made by some combination of these three types of boxes?"

S. and I actually stayed late at work trying to figure it out. Writing down formulas, figuring out patterns, etc. And I felt my brain slowly unrust itself and grind to work. It was exhilarating.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm on the fast track to middle-class, middle-age, and vague-discontent. AKA, mediocre in every way, shape, and form. I sit around and wonder what the hell I'm doing. If your life was a movie and the main character had a choice between going to do what their heart desired, or selling out for the glitz and glamor of new york city, the audience would unanimously root for the character to do what their heart desired. Mainly because going to the movies is about fantasy. And everyone knows that in reality, most people would sell out for the glitz and the glamor. Because it's the practical choice. Because it's so hard to give it up. Because it's "better for your future family". I wish I could be the heroine of my own movie and make the "right" choice. But, unlike movies, not all lives have happy endings, and I'm not sure if I have the courage to take that sort of leap.

If your life was a movie, what movie star would play you? I've decided that based on non-physical characteristics, because hey, who really looks like a movie star, it'd be Sandra Bullock, or Julie Roberts. Perhaps Cameron Diaz because I'm ditzy at times, talk too fast, and say the wrong thing. If my life was a movie, I'd have the reassurance that everything would turn out alright in the end. But I don't.

I always imagine that when I die, the first thing I'll see is a replay of my life from birth to death. The movie screen will flicker on, and there'll be the big bull's eye target with the numbers in the middle, old-school style. 3. 2. 1. And it will be a silent film. Because the voice inside my head will narrate it for me. The movie of my life, shown for an audience of one, me.

I hope at the end of it all, it will be a good film. One that will make me laugh, and make me cry. And as much as cheesy B-rate movies are bashed among the film critics, I hope my life is a cheesy B-rate movie. Because if there's one thing that B-rate movies do well, it's making you feel good. I want my life to be a feel-good movie.

posted by ink| 10:01 AM |
[Monday, December 16, 2002]

Talk to Her.

I walked out of this movie a little confused. I think I need practice watching independent films/foreign films. I seem to walk out of most of them feeling a little confused and like I need some downtime to really think about it. I can't seem to ever just leave it either. I always feel like I need to tease out the meaning behind it and I can't rest until I have it all laid out in front of me, like a neat little string finally untangled.

I couldn't decide whether this movie was about the coupling and uncoupling that happen in a person's life, whether it was about obsession, or whether it was about women. One thing that I did find interesting though, was the Pedro Almodovar was also the director of All About My Mother.

Going into Lincoln Plaza Cinemas itself was strange. Last time I was there was 4 years ago, with my ex-boyfriend, going to see All About My Mother. He grew up in Argentina and still spoke Spanish with his sisters, so for him, going to see a Spanish film was great. For me, it was my first foreign film. So entering Lincoln Plaza Cinemas again today was a little disconcerting. It brought back strangely familiar memories. And watching a movie directed by the same director only created more strange parallels. Except in this case, instead of having Fernando sit beside me, it was Lux. Instead of sharing a bucket of popcorn in which our greasy fingers would touch, we were munching on fat squashy brownies.

Pedro Almodovar seems to focus on movies about women. I found it interesting that although this movie was about men, it was about men who were focused on women. Women in comas to be exact. But I still couldn't figure out exactly what the movie was trying to say. The purpose to it all. What was the director's point? After further thought, I realized it was a movie about loneliness and all the forms it can take. It was a movie about the coming and going and return of lovers in our lives. It was a movie about devotion and faith and obsession.

The thing that struck me personally was the obsession part of it. Mainly because that's every girl's greatest fear. A psychopathic stalker. When Lux and I were walking back through Central Park in the dark after our visit at the Whitney, we talked about our fears. Our fear of deep water, dying in plane crashes, sharks. But then Lux said something that really rang true. She said that nothing scares her more than men. Because if a shark attacks you, it's doing what its nature tells it to do. Animals kill to eat. If a man is psycho and attacks you, it isn't because of some instinctual animal nature, it's because he wants to see you suffer. And that is what all living things are instintively afraid of. Not death necessarily, but cruelty. And no animal who attacks you is intentionally cruel. Only humans are. And as women, not just any women, but small women who weigh under 130 pounds and don't really work out or take self defense classes, it gives you a certain sense of vulnerability. Being afraid of corpses dragging you down into deep water is one thing, because it's your imagination that's frightening you. Being afraid of a rapist as you walk through a dark alley is a whole different level because it's that much more real and that much more possible. I would rather be beaten within an inch of my life than be raped. It's every woman's greatest fear. Being a woman, period, makes you vulnerable because you -can- get raped. I suppose men can be raped too. But somehow, I doubt that's what crosses men's minds when they're walking through dark alleys alone.

I don't think men can even fathom what it's like. Unless you let them loose in a prison. But even then, it's not quite the same. Women live with a certain fear everytime they're walking in the dark that men don't truly understand. Penises, like guns, are weapons. And, like guns, the danger depends on whose hands the weapon is in. Luckily, most men in the world are normal and don't turn it on women unless desired. But, it's still like walking through a world where half the population has a loaded gun that they could turn on you if they decided to one day go psycho. You just have to blindly trust that they won't. A fact that I try not to think about, otherwise I'd be a nut worrying about things all the time. It's not really the average man that we're afraid of. It's the loose cannon. For me, it's just the realization that the average man has the power to do me harm. I've never thought about it really before. It's disturbing. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that she is right. When a woman steps out her door at night, she's not afraid of ghosts or goblins. She's afraid of men.

And to think, I used to list "butterflies" and "bloody mary" as my biggest fears.

Lux laughed at me. "You're -just- realizing this about men?" she asked. I nodded. I'd just never really thought about it before. Like all women, I have no fear of having the crap beaten out of me, but a healthy fear of being raped. But I'd never truly thought about rape and men. And the fact that men commit rape. It was just a cloudy ambiguous fear. Never made concrete.

As Lux said, men are the scariest thing that women have to deal with. But yet we all want one. Irony around every corner. Men protect us from other scary men, while simultaneously having the capability to be just as scary, but not exercising it.

The possibilities boggle the mind.

Regardless. We still love men. With all their darks and lights. I just try not to think about the darks too often now that I know they exist. Or else I'd never leave the house.

posted by ink| 1:05 PM |
[Saturday, December 14, 2002]

Oh This is no way to live. Holding on to times called Better. -Kina, Give and Take

I love this song. I put it on endless repeat along with Jewel's Foolish Games and belt out the lyrics. But then I realized... These ARE the times called Better. I thought about it and realized that I'm quite happy. Life always has it's little annoyances, minor dramas, and the occasional hysterics. But overall, I'd say that things have been pretty good. Granted, it might be a bit premature to say so since I only rolled off the Delaware project two weeks ago. But for now, things are great. Lux is finishing up week 1 of the two weeks she's staying with me, and it hasn't been half as bad as I expected. Squeezing two girls into a small 11 X 11 room seems like a recipe for disaster but it's turned out wonderfully. We get along supremely, and best of all, we implicitly know how to give each other space. And space is always the big issue when it comes to roommates. I'll miss her when she's gone.

Plans for today: PhD grad school essays. LSAT's. Apartment hunting with Lux.
What we've done so far: Showered. Sorted laundry. Laid on the bed staring at the ceiling, passing the Frosted Cheerios box back and forth in silence.

posted by ink| 2:03 PM |
[Friday, December 13, 2002]

The Phenomenon of the Sometimes-Boyfriend

Who needs a boyfriend these days?

Men come, they go. New York women have it all figured out. Rebecca Eckler, Saturday Post, Saturday, December 07, 2002
Courtesy of Dana.

posted by ink| 8:00 PM |
[Thursday, December 12, 2002]

Bowling for Columbine.

I watched my first Michael Moore movie on Monday night with Lux and T from LA. Lux (whose name actually starts with M.) was part of my start group. She's from Luxembourg. Since our auspicious first days starting work, life has gone downhill. Both of us are wondering whether this is as good as it gets. After all, this is supposedly one of the best places to work. It feels like one big joke. Except we're not laughing. She's stuffed envelopes in North Jersey while I was being degraded by Project Manager in Delaware. Now, she's still stuffing envelopes in North Jersey while I wait gloomily in Manhattan for my next project. The good news is, we make up for everything in the evening. She recently moved out of her place in NJ and is staying with me for two weeks. And laughing is one thing we do a lot of at night when we get home from work.

That particular night, Lux, T from LA, and I had dinner after work, where we got into a particularly heated discussion about the role of the U.S. in international politics. With everything that's going on in the Middle East right now, people bristled, people argued, and nothing was resolved. Everything was blamed, from oil, to George W., to Osama. We followed up dinner with Bowling for Columbine, which was strangely appropriate considering the dinner conversation. Lux and I laughed. T from LA didn't find it half as funny I don't think. Michael Moore has a very different approach to movie-making. Documentary-style, with no point to be made. It was funny, it was sad, and it said absolutely nothing. And yet, it was oddly enjoyable. After we left the movie, I told T from LA that he couldn't speak for half an hour because I wanted to think and digest everything.

According to Michael Moore, we're a particularly gun-crazy country, with no good reason. It's not due to gun-control laws because Canada has just as many guns, but far less gun-murders. It's not our violent history, because Germany has a violent history as well, and not as many gun-murders either. So what is it about us that makes us different? I've come to the conclusion that it's because our country is run by idiots. Michael Moore brought up a good point I thought, when he said although Marilyn Manson was blamed for Columbine, no one pointed to the President and said that the President is to be blamed for Columbine. The U.S. is one of the only major powers that uses mass firearms to regularly bomb other countries to make them see that we're right. Besides Serbia, I'm hard pressed to think of any other time when the U.S. used its power for any good that wasn't fueled in some way by self interest and masked with the veneer of "Look at how good we are, we're helping so-and-so." You don't tell another family how to raise their children. Likewise, the U.S. is the only country who consistently meddles in everyone else's business. The isolationist policy in effect during World War II wasn't exactly the best idea either. Involvement is definitely necessary, but good Lord, we have to draw a line somewhere.

George W. declaring the Axis of Evil was probably one of the worst PR moves he could've possibly done. As if Osama wasn't enough of a handful (a world superpower cannot track down one individual), Bush has to go and antagonize three additional countries by suddenly naming them as "evil", out of thin air. Granted, we were never on good relations with any of them, but since it was an uneasy truce, why go stir things up again by pointing fingers? And why is Iraq suddenly our main target? Iraq has always been a problem, but whatever happened to focusing the money on Bin Laden? You know, the jackass who blew up the World Trade Center? Are we just redirecting our fire because we're pissed off and want to blow someone, anyone up?

This new declaration means that George W. has gotten out of hand. If we were to make the world a classroom, the U.S. would be the paranoid kid who sees conspiracy theories around every corner, has machine guns at home, and threatens to use them everytime someone doesn't agree with him. You know, the kind that would've been expelled from school for suspicious at-risk behavior in this post-Columbine era.

So. Now we're threatening to use nukes. I can see every other rogue country out there that hates the U.S. prepping up their nukes as well. Way to solve the problem. Now we've got everyone on high tension alert, everyone's mad and afraid. After all, who wouldn't be? No one takes very well to being threatened. Likewise, no country takes very well to being cowed. You have to leave them some room to maneuver and still save their pride. The key to good relations, as any good businessman can tell you, is to allow the client to walk away with their dignity intact, even as they submit to what you wanted. People hate to be humiliated. And the bottom line is, countries are run by people.

Instead of bombing everyone to high heaven, which seems to be the U.S. cure-all to everything, perhaps we should re-examine things. Instead of slapping band-aids on every problem, maybe we should try and find the source of it. Why use band aids when you can find the vaccine and get to the root of it all? So we got sucker-punched by Bin Laden. Yes, we should definitely go beat him down to the ground. Sucker punches suck. But after we do that, we shouldn't forget to think about why we got sucker punched. People don't go on suicide missions for flimsy reasons. People are driven to it by something they feel strongly about. After we fix this little mess, perhaps we should think about prevention for next time. Why do these people hate the U.S.? It can't just be a case of the have's and the have-not's. You don't see them hating parts of Europe, and Europe is a "have" as well. No one likes to admit that they're flawed. Least of all the U.S. But come on, we apparently have idiots running the country. Or, as the prime minster of Canada said, morons. What does it say about the people who voted him in?

I'd have to say that Michael Moore's lack of conclusion is, in of itself, a conclusion. The reason why America has such a high rate of gun murders obviously isn't because of our gun laws, or our violent history. It's because of the hands that the guns are in.

God bless America.

posted by ink| 7:22 PM |
[Wednesday, December 11, 2002]

Always the wood cutter's daughter.

Sometimes when I'm bored, I surf other people's websites or blogs. Sometimes I'll find a guy who sounds semi-interesting. Then I'll click on a link of his, and it will link to a girl. A girl who is usually extremely pretty, with big eyes, long straight hair, chunky highlights through it (because you know, she's gangsta-style), super petite, and of course, she has lots of pictures of herself on the site. She usually likes things like anime, has had some sort of hard-knock life, and has a badass attitude to offset her small delicate appearance.

I hate doing this. Because inevitably, I realize something that I generally try to ignore. THIS is what guys like. And THIS is the exact antithesis of everything I am. I'm so not... that. It makes me feel like the nerd looking at the popular girls again in high school, and realizing that these are the girls that the guys will go after. Back then, it was an odd sense of despair and snobbery. Snobbery, because I didn't want to be like them anyways. Because I didn't respect everything that they represented. Because quite frankly, I liked the way I was. Despair, because I liked boys, and boys liked Them. And there was no way I could ever be like Them, even if I wanted to. Because I'm fundamentally different. Even if I got to a point where I looked like them, I wouldn't BE them. Because I would still like sci-fi/fantasy books, because I would still voraciously devour non-fiction just for kicks, because I would still be a code monkey by choice, because I like standardized tests. Because I'm more likely to be intimidated and walk away from a girl who gives me the Bitch Look than I am to reward her with a Bitch Look of my own. Because I'm not small and petite, I'm long and lanky. Because when I bat my lashes, I look like I'm just blinking quickly. Because pictures I take of myself never come out cute and seductive, merely strange and unphotogenic. I'm just not... that.

Since my teenage years, the snobbery has disappeared. But, once in a while, I re-enter the sense of gloom. Of realizing the catch-22. So where does that leave me? It leaves me stubbornly in the same place. I refuse to believe that all boys are like that. But after years of being a no-show, you have to wonder if the Heffalump really exists like legend says it does. What the hell is taking it so long?

And, I've realized, not much has changed since those high school years. True, I no longer have huge glasses, the size of my face finally caught up to the size of my ears, my fashion sense has improved a thousand-fold. Lanky has grown to merely "long", and I get a few compliments once in a while. I've grown more comfortable with who I am. But, I still have extraordinarily nerdy quirks, I still linger by the Dungeons and Dragons section of the bookstore sometimes out of nostalgia, I'm still flat. And occasionally, that sense of being on the outside looking in comes back to visit. Because the core of who I am hasn't changed. I'm still the nerd girl, just in better packaging. And the boys still go for the girly girls. The busty blondes. The ones who giggle. The Jennifer Love Hewitt's who know how to toss their hair at the copy machine so that men will pick up their print outs for them. Jennifer Love Hewitt has a huge following of men. A male fan club. Parker Posey and Julia Roberts? They're adored by a mostly female audience. That's me. I'm adored largely by girls and gay men.

My mom used to say that boys will get smarter as they get older. I'm now older and nothing has changed. Life really knows how to deal the cards. I complain about my hand, but yet I won't let it go, because I won't sell out to the "feminine wiles" camp of thought. Statistically speaking, this shouldn't happen. The only way this could possibly be true is if 100% of the men out there are mentally deficient in some way and are incapable of growth of any sort. And that is one thing that I will not and cannot believe. Because then that would only verify my suspicions that the world is not a fair place after all. So even as evidence mounts in my face, I continue to root desperately for the Heffalump.

Go Heffalump go!

posted by ink| 6:05 PM |
[Tuesday, December 10, 2002]


Ever feel like there's so much more to life
But you just have no clue how to reach it right now?
Sick of all the talk between friends
All the things that offend
Desire everything to be set straight but we can't go back in time...
- Fairweather

posted by ink| 4:29 PM |
[Saturday, December 07, 2002]

The Spirit of Christmas.

I love the way the trees smell everytime I walk by the Christmas Tree Man. He sells trees right near my building and I walk by him on my way to the subway everyday. Today, after having dinner with my friend, I walked by him on my way home. He was busy tying another tree up, so while he wasn't looking, I leaned in and inhaled deeply. When I straightened up again, he was staring at me. "What are you doing", he asked. I felt my face go hot. He obviously thinks I'm a tree molester. I stammered, "Smelling your trees?" I knew exactly how psycho I sounded. He laughed. "Here, I'll give you a sample." I was suspicious. Was he going to charge me for these? But he snipped off a few branches and told me to pin them over my door so my room will smell nice. Like a mini-Christmas tree. I was thrilled. Although I'm fundamentally opposed to the idea of live Christmas trees in a living room, a few branches is different. I did feel slightly guilty though, for enjoying the smell of dying trees.

I got home and pinned them over my door. Not quite mistletoe. But I'm satisfied.

I tried to think of a present for my brother today. If you were an 18 year old freshman at MIT, what would you want for Christmas? Besides ass? He shot down the idea of a Palm pilot (he doesn't use a homework planner right now anyways). As well as the idea of an mp3 player (he doesn't listen to music while he studies), and a digital camera (he doesn't take pictures. In fact, he doesn't even own a 35mm camera, nor does he want one). The frat house already has an xbox, so he doesn't want one of those either. He's difficult. But then I thought of something. I'm going to buy him a webcam. So that he can talk to his long distance girlfriend, even though I don't really approve of her. I looked it up online. Webcams are expensive!! I thought about getting him a nice one, and her a not-so-nice one. But then I realized that getting different models would make it hard for the cameras to talk to each other. Damn. I thought about it. I decided to get them both nice ones. I don't approve of her... but I'll spend 50 bucks on her because it will make my brother happy. I'll be satisfied if they don't use it for pornographic purposes. *Sigh*. Fifty dollars. With that money, I could buy myself a copy of Lord of the Rings, the big one-volume compilation hardback, with color illustrations.

He owes me. Big time. He better not forget my birthday anymore. And this Christmas, I don't want to have to drag him to the store, point at what I want, and force him to pay for it. He better do it with a smile.

posted by ink| 1:06 AM |
[Thursday, December 05, 2002]

Flakes!!!

IT'S SNOWING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! =D =D =D

As much as I hate using emoticons in anything but the occasional instant message, I -must- use it this time in order to adequately express the sense of joy I felt when I woke up with my hair sticking up everywhere, slapped the snooze button grouchily, stumbled to the bathroom with my eyes half-closed, and passed by the window. I backed up and looked at the window again. That was when I -really- woke up. My eyes widened.

It's snowing. It's snowing. It's snowing!

It took a few tries before that thought got through to my brain and was processed correctly.

I decided right there and then to work from home. It's snowing! There's nothing better than sitting in your pajamas when it's snowing outside and working from your bed at home. Especially when you just went grocery shopping yesterday and have a cabinet full of munchies. I have never been -so- happy to have finished my stint in Delaware. If I was in Delaware right now, driving through the snow to meet Project Manager, I would be in -such- a foul mood. Especially since Other Analyst Who Got Stuck There informed me that the client told Project Manager to fly home yesterday because of the impending snow, and he didn't. He claimed it wouldn't snow. Hehehehe. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself when I heard that. He'll probably get stuck in Delaware for the night. I have never been so thankful for being alive and -not- in Delaware than I am right now. I'm starting to think that maybe this job isn't so bad. I -am- working from home today after all. It's snowing. I still can't get over that fact.

I love snow. I love winter. First snow of the year. -So- excited. Maybe I'll call T. and see if he wants to come over and hold my hand.

posted by ink| 8:58 AM |

Once Upon a Midnight Clear

I inadvertently had one of the best nights. T., the one who gnawed on me a few weeks ago, called me up tonight for drinks. Drinks led to dinner, which then led to walking around New York. There is nothing I love more than walking around New York City at night, when it's cold, with hats and scarves on, huddled together, and the tips of your noses turning cold. We walked down Fifth Avenue and saw the store windows for Bergdorf and Saks. Saks had a window that featured people on a ski lift, wearing Chanel everything, holding a Chanel snowboard. Yeah, you heard me right, a CHANEL SNOWBOARD. T. and I talked about what it would be like to be rich enough to afford such things. We both agreed that at times like these, the thought of having a sugar daddy doesn't seem quite so bad anymore.

I saw the Rockefeller tree for the first time. It was gorgeous with all the lights. We saw it from afar because of all the barriers that were still up from the concert. But as I squinted my eyes and looked more carefully, it suddenly hit me like a mack truck. The Rockefeller tree is a REAL TREE. I never knew that. That fact upset me like no other. I'd never really thought about what was under all the lights. But now I could see it, its trunk, the needles, and everything. I would've been much happier if it was fake. It upset me to think that some tree up in Connecticut or Vermont spent all this time growing big and tall, whispering with all the other trees, gossiping with the squirrels, only to end up as a decorated idiot in the middle of the most unnatural thing on this planet - a city.

It felt like a farce. Is the Rockefeller tree any better than a circus? The concept is the same. Something from nature, taken out of nature, dressed up in bright ridiculous ways, for the amusement of the human race. For the elephant, it's performing undignified tricks that no elephant in nature would be caught dead doing. For the tree, it's wearing these silly blinking lights. Either way, both are forced to conform to the human world. I suddenly felt guilty for enjoying the smell of the Christmas trees being sold outside my apartment building. As I walked by them again, I inhaled the fragrance but knew inside that a real tree would never make it into my living room. It feels almost macabre and un-Christmas-like to maim a living thing and then display it for your children, forcing it to wear silly ornaments while it slowly dies and rots in your living room. Where's the spirit of giving?

T. and I argued over whether the Rockefeller tree tradition was a threat to trees overall. I argued that if a large tree is cut down every year for Rockefeller, the rate of attrition of the number of trees that size is greater than the number of trees reaching that size since it takes longer than just one year to grow that much. He argued that if you plant a tree for every tree you cut down, it all evens out. We had a great time jabbering away to each other in the cold. I couldn't believe it was already 11:30 when I looked at my watch. Where had the time gone? We held hands on the way back. He grabbed my hand and jammed both of them into his one pocket. It worked. My hand felt warmer. It was nice. I tried not to think about the fact that he was gay and just enjoyed it. He even walked me home. Kinda like a fake boyfriend. But I suppose that's the closest I can get right now.

I'm quite satisfied.

posted by ink| 12:08 AM |
[Wednesday, December 04, 2002]

Email. Forwarded.

A LETTER FROM THE PENIS
I, the Penis, hereby request a raise in salary for the following reasons:
I do physical labor.
I work at great depths.
I plunge head first into everything I do.
I do not get weekends or public holidays off.
I work in a damp environment.
I don't get paid overtime.
I work in a dark workplace that has poor ventilation.
I work in high temperatures.
My work exposes me to contagious diseases.

RESPONSE:
After assessing your request, and considering the arguments you have raised,the administration rejects your request for the following reasons:
You do not work 8 hours straight.
You fall asleep on the job after brief work periods.
You do not always follow the orders of the management team.
You do not stay in your designated area and are often seen visiting other locations.
You do not take initiative -- you need to be pressured and stimulated in order to start working.
You leave the workplace rather messy at the end of your shift.
You don't always observe necessary safety regulations, such as wearing the correct protective clothing.
You will retire well before you are 65.
You are unable to work double shifts.
You sometimes leave your designated work before you have completed the assigned task.
And if that were not all, you have been seen constantly entering and exiting the workplace carrying two suspicious-looking bags.

posted by ink| 3:45 PM |
[Tuesday, December 03, 2002]

Restored. Relieved. Reprieved.

My faith in humanity has been restored. Second day being unstaffed, and I did nothing all day but chat with one old colleague and one new colleague. Funny how the word "colleague" makes them sound so old. And makes me sound so old. But they're really just kids who started on the same day that I did. I rediscovered how cool S. is. We'd always gotten along rather well, all through training. But I hadn't seen him in a month or two. Today, we did nothing but talk all day about our futures and what we wanted to do. That's when I pinned down the source of my unhappiness yesterday. I didn't know what to do with my life, and I couldn't untangle the skein. I hate indecision and uncertainty. I do most of my figuring out, out loud while talking to people, bouncing ideas off until something goes *ding*. A lot of the people I had been associating with lately are in the same position as I am. Young and lost. The difference with S. though, is that he started thinking about it seriously, and everyone else I've been talking to just sort of ignores the problem, as if it would go away if you don't think about it. It was nice to talk to someone about the options that I was considering, and to hear about the options he was considering, and to volley ideas back and forth, whether things are plausible financially-speaking, whether the benefits outweighed the risks, what the opportunity cost of this option or that option was, the versatility of this graduate degree or that graduate degree. It was nicer than the usual "Oh. That's nice. Yeah, that sounds cool." Or "Yeah. I have no idea what I'm doing either. *Kaput*". Those kind of responses leave you dead in the water. What else can you say but "Oh. Okay." Neither S or I are that different from everyone else. After all, like everyone else, we don't know what we're doing either. But it had been so long since I'd been able to discuss the uncertainty with someone. No one wants to talk about the uncertainty. And talking to S. today really cleared up a lot of things. Granted, I'm no closer to the answer now than I was before, but the facts are that much clearer in my mind.

We pinpointed our problems down to a few major things. We made a list of the things we know, the things we want, and the things we don't want.
Things We Know We Want: Further education of some sort. To become an expert at something.
Question: What kind of further education? To what extent? How many years of our 20's are we willing to sacrifice for this further education? What are the payoff's for this? What kind of lifestyle will it give us? Is it possible to even find a job you like? Perhaps it's easier to find a job that will maximize our life-after-work. After all, we don't want work to become our life.

Things We Know We Don't Want: This. This consulting thing. We feel like it's fluff. Sure, like anything else, there's a learning curve that you have to struggle over. But the difficulty in that lies in the fact that it's unfamiliar territory. The unfamiliarity is the difficulty, not the actual material. The actual material isn't particularly challenging. Neither of us feel stimulated, or that we're learning and expanding our brains. Sure, the paycheck and lifestyle rocks, but is it worth the sacrifice of your brain slowly dying? Is the prestige of saying "Yes, I work at a Big 5 consulting firm" worth it? In a nutshell, is being a corporate tool worth the perks?
Our Conclusion: No. Neither of us plans to stay more than a year or two. Hopefully just one year. The fact that we already know this after working here only 4 months is a sad sad thing.
Questions: Can we give up the lifestyle? Can we go from having the capability to buy nice clothes and shoes to being poor? And not only poor, but probably deeply in debt if med school or law school is what we end up choosing? Should parents pay for graduate school? We had a nice debate about that. About the jurisdiction of the parent and where it ends. The moral implications of it all. If we do go to graduate school, is a PhD less versatile than an MD? Is the tradeoff in lifestyle for a PhD worth it over an MD? A JD is obviously most versatile, but its versatility is almost what makes it a poor tool in the search for a calling. It gives no direction. You're no better off after a JD than you were before. You still have a zillion options, except now you have a few extra letters after your name. Financial cost-wise, a PhD is obviously the better choice. Time cost-wise, a JD is the best option. Personal rewards-wise, MD takes the cake. And, since both of us are Ivy League graduates, would we be able to stomach going to anything less than a name-brand graduate school? We know it's just a psychological issue, but it's something to take into account. If we decide that we absolutely have to have a name-brand graduate degree to match our undergraduate degree, are we willing to sacrifice the time it takes to take extra courses so that we're eligible for those name-brand schools? Is the time spent on these extra courses worth the extra shine on the degree that most likely, no one will care about anyways?

We have no answers to the questions. But just the fact that the questions now have form makes them easier to tackle. We've identified them. And despite the fact that I'm in the same exact place today that I was yesterday with no idea what I'm going to do with myself, I feel a thousand times better. I feel like I'm on firmer footing.

posted by ink| 6:21 PM |
[Monday, December 02, 2002]

"He watched the scene and thought of life; and (as always happened when he thought of life) he became sad." -James Joyce

It's odd to come home and have my evenings free. I don't know what to do with myself. So I sit on my bed and stare at the ceiling, and itch, itch to move. Eventually though, it settles down into an overall sense of gloom. I stare at the ceiling and try to make patterns out of the speckled ceiling instead as I wade through the morass of feelings. Melancholy. Melancholy seems to be the predominant mood of the evening. I tend to blame hormones when I'm inexplicably feeling mopey, but sometimes I think I blame too much on hormones, so that I can avoid thinking about what's really bothering me. Because I don't feel like digging to the root of it all. Because I'm not just mopey, but mopey and grouchy. Now that life has finally slowed down, I have time to think. Work had blissfully anesthetized me from the agony of thinking too much about things. After all, when you have your head down and your back bowed from the whip of your manager, you don't have time to think about much else. The question is, what is it this time that's bothering me? Do I really want to know? Discovering the source mandates that I try and find an answer for it. And finding answers is always a difficult process.

I miss home. I want to lie on my bed at home and brood. I do all my best brooding in my old room - the setting and witness to countless of my teenage and young adult worries. I think I'm suffering from verbal constipation. Somehow, I've lost the capability to put what I'm feeling into words. I've lost the capability to give it shape. I write and get nowhere. There is no revealing shape of my worries through the mist. Just a hard nub of anxiety still trapped inside, a tangled knot of confusion, an unexplainable sense of melancholy, and a strange listlessness. I want to call my friends, but when I do, I have nothing to say to them. Some people try to fill their loneliness with lots of activities and lots of friends, with busy-ness, enough to numb it all and ignore it. Me, I let it sit there empty, I let it ache and swell as I quarantine myself in my room and brood. I let it run its course like a cold, because I know (or I hope) it will blow over in the morning. In the meantime, I'll sit and watch my phone and hope it rings. Because there's nothing that makes you feel more pathetic than calling a friend and saying "I'm bummy", and not being able to provide a reason why. Because there are no explanations. Or at least, none that you want to face.

posted by ink| 7:06 PM |

Mothers, Daughters, Bath, Bubbles, and the rest of the town.

I stood at the mirror in the bathroom while my mom soaked in the tub. We're a rather immodest family in that sense. My mom aches a lot since she spends a lot of her day on her feet as a nurse. My mother's body always looks strangely familiar when she's naked, as I'm built a lot like her. We're cut by the same pair of scissors, although from very different cloths. I looked at her through the mirror and noticed her rounded belly from having children, the familiar shape of her legs, and how her body has the same proportions as mine. I glanced at her between my tweezers and saw that we had the same "problem areas", although on her they were much more noticeable since she was older, and on me, they were merely "small problems" so far. We gain weight in the same places. Through her, I could guess at what I would be like. I felt like Cassandra from Delphi. I could see the future me, at 49, hovering over my mother like a blurry image, her face replaced by mine every time I blinked.

I finished tweezing and started my makeup routine. "Are you wearing that out?" my mother asked. I was wearing my favorite pair of corduroys with my pajama shirt on top. I gave her a bored look. "What do you think mom? Do you think I'm going to wear this out?" I make a habit of doing things half dressed, partly because I'm easily distracted, partly because I usually decide on one half of my outfit before I decide on the other. You'd think she'd know this by now. I pursed my lips together and turned. "You like this new shade of lipstick mom?" She peered at me critically from the tub and shrugged. "I'm behind on the fashions these days." Translation: I don't like it. I pursed my lips again, this time in irritation. My mother and I rarely get along. But yet we lean on each other for the most ridiculous things. And her disapproval of my lipstick, although I theoretically couldn't care less about her opinion, made me suddenly bored with the shade. I wiped it off with a tissue and applied my usual Chapstick. I tried to do something with my hair to make it as un-mullet-like as possible.

She stuck her toe into the tub faucet and began the usual spiel, a detailed dissection of my character. "You know, you're really too opinionated. I'm only telling you this because I love you. You should be less argumentative. Boys don't like that. Or, maybe you should be a lawyer." She laughed at her own joke. I gave her the death stare through the mirror. She splashed in the tub and said casually, "You know, Dr. C's son hasn't found a job yet." I ignored her. "He graduated from Wharton, you know", she added meaningfully. I hear an update on poor Dr. C's son everytime I'm home. "Such a shame", she said. It's impossible to live in my town without knowing the whereabouts of everyone else. I left the entire thing behind when I went to college. Never even bothered to keep in touch with anyone, and yet, I know the details of everyone's life. I wondered idly what other parents said to their kids about me. "Did you hear? Mrs. K's daughter was deferred for a year from her job. How tragic. I hear she's working in -research- right now. Can you -believe- that?", followed up with the ever-present comment on salary, "I hear there isn't much money in research." I finished getting dressed and turned around for a final approval. My mom smiled, "You look so grown up, not like that other junk you used to wear. Now if you'd just take out some of your earrings and only wear two, you'd look much less trampy." Trust a mother to ruin a compliment.

As I tramped down the stairs, I thought about the pattern of inheritance in my family. I'd obviously inherited my mother's body. I swore I'd never inherit her way of sounding like she's chiding you all the time. But I had a sneaking suspicion that I already did that. I worried about inheriting her psychoses as well. The emotional imbalance. But, I suppose every daughter thinks her mother is a psycho. Until she becomes a mother herself. "I like your hair!" she called out from the bathroom. Great, she loves the mullet of all things.

I picked up my friend from high school at her house. She fed me a juicy bit of gossip. "Did you hear? J. is no longer dating S. Apparently, J. told her friend M. that they were dating, and M. told her mom, and then her mom mistakenly mentioned it to J's mom, and J's mom threw a fit." I paused. She continued, "Oh, by the way, I heard you were applying to grad school. Your dad told my dad." I sighed and gave in. No use fighting the current when it runs as deeply and strongly as it does in our community.

There are times when I find myself seriously weighing my parent's words, and trying to decide their exact worth. I used to brush off whatever they said, because I believed that they were old-fashioned and didn't understand the world as I do. They say what they say to the other parents because they love me. Not because they're trying to ruin my life, as I used to believe. They're proud of me in public, even as they state their uncertainties to me in private, and now I appreciate that. I used to think that their questions on my future was a questioning of my decision-making skills. I'm starting to think though, that maybe my parents do have some good points about my decision making skills. As much as I hate to admit it, my dad's right, I am getting to an age where I should have more direction than I do now. Inaction will only trap me into the status quo, which I've already established I hate. I'm starting to listen to more of what he says. I filter out anything related to the words "medical school" and take the meaning behind his words. For the first time, I'm beginning to truly listen to what my parents have to say. I think this is the beginning of the denouement of the Ego. The Ego that comes with Youth.

I'm even realizing that even though my mom can't figure out how to use email, maybe what she has to say has some merit. After all, my "mullet" that she loved as "cute" got me somewhere last night. I have a date on Thursday night. Maybe she's right for some things after all.

And, I'm considering law school. But I'm still leaving all my earrings in.

posted by ink| 1:12 AM |
(Acknowledgements)


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