some kaleidoscopic breathing exercise
Jan. 13th, 2006 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aruanWorking is interesting. I keep having these little moments, walking down a tiled hallway with my heels clicking, and I look down and I'm wearing grey slacks and a black suit jacket and have a keycard dangling from my pocket and calling the New York Times Company Employee Services Center to set up my payroll account and will imminently be in a roomful of grown-ups treating me like I was one of them. Granted, I'm far from working the conventional nine-to-five or wanting to take my anger out on office technology, but I'm a little less mystified by something I've wondered about since being very young: How does the world work?
No, really, how do I have running water to shower with and food to buy and all the other invisible processes that make life possible? Well, now I know how that newspaper got on my doorstep every morning (though that one I learned from the bottom-up, helping my mom deliver them when my parents had to do that sort of thing to make ends meet). I know why people get certain jobs and locked out of others. I get why they go to work, but I also get just wanting to get back to what you were doing before you had to leave it mid-sentence to jump in the shower and leave to get there.
I also think about the fact that I'm not the youngest person I know in fandom anymore. I remember being on the XFR mailing list (when those were still en vogue) and hating being 13 because I wanted to go to Boston and Texas and meet all these fabulously funny and smart women and drink and talk about the show until all hours of the morning. I think now about what kind of role I can reasonably allot that once-essential part of my life.
After coming across oogobs of brochures from my senior year of high school in some box the other day, I'm thinking about not being in college anymore, about how maybe I wasted my potential by not applying to some small snooty school at the foot of some far-off mountain and dedicated four years of my life to walking barefoot no matter what the weather and reading books that don't exist outside of their libraries. That maybe I would've learned something completely different and ended up worlds away from here.
I wonder what I would've become and what's next at age 23. [shakes head]
Mostly, I wonder about the fact that everything I knew how to do - go to class, take tests, fulfill marginal else in the way of responsibility and fuck off anytime I wanted at only my own expense - is over. And what is next? Is work all there is from here on in? What is this "life" you speak of, and how does one get it, exactly?
So tonight, I snuck off after the last page was done with my iPod Shuffle and danced like a loon in a deserted hallway just outside the newsroom to Come Out and Play. Ben walked by and almost caught me, at which I froze and flushed crimson, thank god for the relatively low evening lighting, but it felt so good. So... normal.
In pop news, something I never thought I'd be current with again: Yay for more JC solo material, interested to see what La Timberlake contributed. Boo to no more CFTC, as loud singing, holding my breath every time an elevator door opened and sneaking into VIP have been hallmarks of How I Spent My Summer Vacation for four years, and why mess with a good thing? Err, Joey talking about black history issues will be... something? Good for Justin and Cameron if the engagement rumors are true. Relatedly, good for Justin and his swanky new UK tour-promoted solo venture come June. Really, there is nothing but goodwill in my heart for all those boys until the end of days.
In The Hive news, what she said here. I've been wondering this very thing, about the WINDFALL of drug addict!fic that should've spilled forth from it, but have found nothing. Nothing! Fandom, you work in mysterious ways.
The men of my week are Conan and the Max Weinberg Seven - the former for taking his desk out tonight (I LIVE for cheap blue-screen comedy with shotgun straightmen) and the latter for playing Kelly Clarkson's Since You Been Gone during the "walkover" so Conan could razz them about it extensively. Also the fact that they're taking the show to Finland because they allegedly worship him like a golden god for looking like their prime minister. And he's going to be this massive dork about it, though they'll want to wrap him in furs and knight him. [heart]
And since it seems like the time of year for unpopular opinions...
-I once wrote up a really comprehensive comparison, which has since been reclaimed by the ether, but I use this browser and love it. Everyone and their mothers going apeshit about Firefox doesn't make it hog any less of my system memory, or make it any less annoying when the windows start falling off the edge of the world, or all the other ways in which Maxthon is totally teh shit.
-People in their early twenties who are reproducing are so alien to me that walking through the Target near my apartment is an exercise in not gaping. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
walkingshadow wondered last week, who ARE they? Where do they find each other? Why are they compelled to reproduce before they've done anything with their own lives?
-The pretention that comes from saying someone can't approach a topic they weren't born into, weaned on, and walked 10,000 uphill miles in three feet of snow, is really freakin' annoying.
-Much as I bitch about it, at the end of the day I love El Jay's filtering capabilities. Because the idea of a regular weblog venting all of your thoughts and emotions into the universe is charming, but it's not practical. Sometimes, there are three people I don't want reading something.
-Apostrophe plurals are the eleventh plague, which went unmentioned in the Bible because PEOPLE COULD CONSTRUCT PLURALS PROPERLY BACK THEN.
-Deriving enjoyment from watching people play poker is more foreign to me than every language I don't speak all together. At least Rummy involves some card-counting! There is nothing cool or suave or athletic or at all compelling about poker, but then you add the fact that you're not the one playing and I can't imagine anything more mind-numbing.
-Everything she said here.
I really should've gone to bed four hours ago, but being caught up on the friendslist, especially after all of Anthony's talk about claiming something for myself separate from the office, seemed more necessary.
No, really, how do I have running water to shower with and food to buy and all the other invisible processes that make life possible? Well, now I know how that newspaper got on my doorstep every morning (though that one I learned from the bottom-up, helping my mom deliver them when my parents had to do that sort of thing to make ends meet). I know why people get certain jobs and locked out of others. I get why they go to work, but I also get just wanting to get back to what you were doing before you had to leave it mid-sentence to jump in the shower and leave to get there.
I also think about the fact that I'm not the youngest person I know in fandom anymore. I remember being on the XFR mailing list (when those were still en vogue) and hating being 13 because I wanted to go to Boston and Texas and meet all these fabulously funny and smart women and drink and talk about the show until all hours of the morning. I think now about what kind of role I can reasonably allot that once-essential part of my life.
After coming across oogobs of brochures from my senior year of high school in some box the other day, I'm thinking about not being in college anymore, about how maybe I wasted my potential by not applying to some small snooty school at the foot of some far-off mountain and dedicated four years of my life to walking barefoot no matter what the weather and reading books that don't exist outside of their libraries. That maybe I would've learned something completely different and ended up worlds away from here.
I wonder what I would've become and what's next at age 23. [shakes head]
Mostly, I wonder about the fact that everything I knew how to do - go to class, take tests, fulfill marginal else in the way of responsibility and fuck off anytime I wanted at only my own expense - is over. And what is next? Is work all there is from here on in? What is this "life" you speak of, and how does one get it, exactly?
So tonight, I snuck off after the last page was done with my iPod Shuffle and danced like a loon in a deserted hallway just outside the newsroom to Come Out and Play. Ben walked by and almost caught me, at which I froze and flushed crimson, thank god for the relatively low evening lighting, but it felt so good. So... normal.
In pop news, something I never thought I'd be current with again: Yay for more JC solo material, interested to see what La Timberlake contributed. Boo to no more CFTC, as loud singing, holding my breath every time an elevator door opened and sneaking into VIP have been hallmarks of How I Spent My Summer Vacation for four years, and why mess with a good thing? Err, Joey talking about black history issues will be... something? Good for Justin and Cameron if the engagement rumors are true. Relatedly, good for Justin and his swanky new UK tour-promoted solo venture come June. Really, there is nothing but goodwill in my heart for all those boys until the end of days.
In The Hive news, what she said here. I've been wondering this very thing, about the WINDFALL of drug addict!fic that should've spilled forth from it, but have found nothing. Nothing! Fandom, you work in mysterious ways.
The men of my week are Conan and the Max Weinberg Seven - the former for taking his desk out tonight (I LIVE for cheap blue-screen comedy with shotgun straightmen) and the latter for playing Kelly Clarkson's Since You Been Gone during the "walkover" so Conan could razz them about it extensively. Also the fact that they're taking the show to Finland because they allegedly worship him like a golden god for looking like their prime minister. And he's going to be this massive dork about it, though they'll want to wrap him in furs and knight him. [heart]
And since it seems like the time of year for unpopular opinions...
-I once wrote up a really comprehensive comparison, which has since been reclaimed by the ether, but I use this browser and love it. Everyone and their mothers going apeshit about Firefox doesn't make it hog any less of my system memory, or make it any less annoying when the windows start falling off the edge of the world, or all the other ways in which Maxthon is totally teh shit.
-People in their early twenties who are reproducing are so alien to me that walking through the Target near my apartment is an exercise in not gaping. As
walkingshadow wondered last week, who ARE they? Where do they find each other? Why are they compelled to reproduce before they've done anything with their own lives?-The pretention that comes from saying someone can't approach a topic they weren't born into, weaned on, and walked 10,000 uphill miles in three feet of snow, is really freakin' annoying.
-Much as I bitch about it, at the end of the day I love El Jay's filtering capabilities. Because the idea of a regular weblog venting all of your thoughts and emotions into the universe is charming, but it's not practical. Sometimes, there are three people I don't want reading something.
-Apostrophe plurals are the eleventh plague, which went unmentioned in the Bible because PEOPLE COULD CONSTRUCT PLURALS PROPERLY BACK THEN.
-Deriving enjoyment from watching people play poker is more foreign to me than every language I don't speak all together. At least Rummy involves some card-counting! There is nothing cool or suave or athletic or at all compelling about poker, but then you add the fact that you're not the one playing and I can't imagine anything more mind-numbing.
-Everything she said here.
I really should've gone to bed four hours ago, but being caught up on the friendslist, especially after all of Anthony's talk about claiming something for myself separate from the office, seemed more necessary.
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