A Long Time
February 5, 2010
I’m sitting in a booth at Hole n’ the Wall and my fingers are wrapped around a cold glass of Lone Star poured from a pitcher. A stoned country musician stands on the stage and sings songs about whiskey, and zombies, and love. As I drink my beer, the first sip of alcohol I’ve had in 29 days, I feel a little silly because my smile is so big. The people sitting behind me probably think I just turned 21.
Earlier this evening I convinced my boyfriend, Joe, to accept that I wouldn’t be going the entire month of no drinking as originally planned. The night before I tried to bribe him with sushi: I’d take him out if he wouldn’t make me feel like I had failed for drinking 3 days early. He refused. Which is pretty amazing because Joe loves sushi. Especially free sushi. But he just wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t be disappointed in myself.
But tonight, in an attempt to help him trust that I wouldn’t regret my decision, I explained all of my reasons why. The month time limit is arbitrary. Work was rough. 29 days is so long for me that it doesn’t stand much different than 31 in my eyes. And what if I had decided to go the month of February, which only has 28 days? And, the first of February falls on a Monday and we have to go to goddamn work on Tuesday morning, leaving us little freedom to celebrate.
I went on to say that I wouldn’t be disappointed in myself because I am already so proud of myself for having gone this long–the longest I can remember. Then I offered to buy him free quesadillas. I guess there is just something about melted cheese.
Drinking these glasses of Lone Star, I feel relaxed. Happy. Subtly excited about nothing specific other than life itself. This sounds like the opposite of my previous entry, in which I was charged with excitement to be searching for that youthful ability to find joy in the simplicity around me.
But I’ve learned a lot during my sober nights spent with coffee and tea. I realized it is good to take a break from that selfish friend alcohol. But you can’t completely forbid yourself from something if you truly, really, absolutely want to have it. If you do, you’ll just want it more.
In all seriousness, life is strange. And, for me, sometimes, alcohol makes it less so. We are here for a long, long time and we’re never told why. I am still trying to figure out what I am going to do with myself. Several weeks into not drinking, I had such a clear mind, a mind that had much too much time and space and initiative to ponder the things in life that are most confusing. I really felt like I was beginning to go crazy.
And though I did have some fun and was able to go out and laugh during my sober Friday and Saturday nights, most of the time I became tired and wanted to go home early. I felt too grown up. Too well behaved. Too safe.
My final consensus is that I’m too young to not drink. Because, we all know it’s true, alcohol makes things fun, it makes the time pass, and it distracts you from overwhelming thoughts. In the end, alcohol is awesome. In some sort of moderation, because I learned that this is also important.
Driving down the Drag toward Hole tonight, Joe and I were surrounded by our previous UT life. Beautiful buildings of knowledge on the right and students everywhere in between. The music playing on the car stereo was from a time even further back. Oasis sang to us about being yourself. Not being anybody else. I looked at Joe and said, “I am somebody who drinks.” He said, “You are,” with an accepting and pleased smile.
And that’s okay. I’m not going to pretend that I’d rather be sipping on green tinted water.
It’s All In Your Head
January 18, 2010
The best thing about having something wrong with your head is getting to keep your pants on during an MRI. Because it is necessary to only capture images of the brain, the technician leaves half of your body outside the MRI tunnel of mystery. This also allows you to look down and out into the room, lessening any feelings of anxiety or claustrophobia. As the insanely loud noises of the MRI, caused by who knows what, signaled impending doom, at least I could wiggle my freezing toes to make sure I was still alive.
While getting my third, and final, MRI today, I thought of these things. I thought of the good. And I thought of the bad. I thought of the journey that brought me into that room with the super nice technician freaking me out. This man has seen the images of my brain, its soft tissue, and blood vessels. If there is something obviously wrong with me, he is well aware of it. Surely he is being so nice because he knows I am going to get some very bad news tomorrow.
Yeah, it crossed my mind that there could be something bad going on up there in my head. But I know deep down that there isn’t. I have dealt with severe chronic headaches since my sophomore year of high school. The indescribable pain makes me cry sometimes and curse most times. Other symptoms include not being able to talk, irritability, sensitivity to light and noise, sadness, and the occasional and strange situation called aura, in which bright light surrounds me and I cannot see out of it. The lingering and unanswered question of why does this happen to me? is almost as unbearable as everything physical.
Most who are unluckily plagued likely feel the same. In some cases the doctor can figure out why a person gets headaches. And sometimes the person can prevent them from coming by adjusting their lifestyle. Avoid eating tomatoes, chocolate, MSG, and perhaps dairy. Exercise more. Pay attention to your menstrual cycle. Try controlling your stress. But in the end, humans have not yet found what causes headaches or how to cure them.
At the risk of sounding pretentious, I am damn healthy. And I have never found a “trigger” food. I was stressed as hell during high school (obviously not due to a rigorous work load. In Spanish class we watched Friday and Next Friday, in English). Once I went to college, I was away from the sources of my stress, and it left, but the headaches stayed. For the first few years they were tension-type, then morphed into migraines, and are currently exertion headaches.
I’ve tried everything. Muscle relaxers, which were awesome especially when mixed with red wine, only numbed the pain but did not fix it. Chiropractic care did nothing. A low dose antidepressant, which has been shown to help some, actually did help, but I didn’t feel myself. Vicodin, same as the muscle relaxers. Acupuncture twice a week for four weeks along with Chinese herbs worked well but did not last. I didn’t notice a difference from taking the herb Feverfew or magnesium supplements. Sometimes ibuprofen can help once I already have a headache, but I worry about my liver, which has been through so much already.
The previous MRIs were normal. But the last one was two years ago and did not include contrast. So I went today, despite my self-assurance that I am unfortunately fine, and had an MRI, MRI with contrast, and an MRA, which takes a closer look at the blood vessels in the brain. The procedure did not hurt, but the $1,002.00 that I had to pay was a blow to my savings. And strange as I have health insurance under two healthcare plans.
My doctor, who I am lucky to have found, is Indian and intelligent and open minded. He will call me tomorrow with the results. They will be normal, I am quite sure. But I wish that something were wrong. Something minor, not life-threatening. Something that would enable Dr. Mandalapu to tell me what I need to hear–why this immense pain shoots into my head so often. Why I have a disease with no name. Why I can stop searching.
Blame It All On My Roots
January 10, 2010
Growing up I would take sips of my parents’ beers as they sat and watched us play outside on hot nights among the chirping crickets and locusts. Those tiny tastes tasted gross back then and within seconds I would go back to being endlessly entertained by my simple surroundings.
The year I consumed my first alcoholic beverage marked my transition away from that blissful and innocent period of life when a child can find happiness in almost anything. I had just turned 13, had dark brown hair, pale skin, and just started wearing real bras. Youth was leaving and the more gone that it became, the more that I needed something else to help pass the time.
One day during the summer before eighth grade, I was at home with my best friend Ashley Womack and we were as bored as two teenage girls stuck in the country could be. Sitting around and singing to my Matchbox 20 and Jewel CDs could not keep us content anymore.
My brother and sister were gone. My mom was at work as she often was. And my dad was in route to Mexico with his friend Albert. Ashley and I thought we were safe. We brought my parents’ 6-pack of Coors Light from the laundry room refrigerator into the living room, sat down on the rough forest green carpet in front of the loud TV, and popped open our first beer. It still tasted disgusting, but now I didn’t care. Our giggling, laughing, and joke telling could have been a result of the alcohol, or it could have been due to the adrenaline we got from breaking the rules. Either way, we had found a way to laugh.
Each of us had drunk one full beer and we were almost done with our second when we heard the sound of cowboy boots stepping onto the hard kitchen floor. Seconds later, not long enough to hide the evidence and chew some gum, my dad appeared. He yelled at us with his intimidating, deep voice. What were we thinking? Well, we thought you were in Mexico.
So began my relationship with alcohol, the magical liquid substance that can create pure fun out of thin air. For people who grew up in small towns, eighth grade probably doesn’t seem like an early age to start drinking. A combination of having nothing to do and having a store that sells alcohol to minors makes it quite easy. Driving around back roads with a six pack of Keystone becomes a perfect Friday night; hanging out in a pasture and drinking whiskey with friends becomes the most exciting thing you’ve done all month; Going to the river with tequila and a blender becomes what you do every weekend in the summer.
Drinking helps us get through the strangeness of living in the middle of nowhere without going crazy, though some still do. It becomes a big part of who we are; just listen to pretty much any country song.
Alcohol has given me some fun memories. At a party held in honor of my 16th birthday, I got drunk on Everclear and later used it to light my hand on fire like all the guys were doing. The flames did not go out as soon as expected and I ended up with second-degree burns, but recovered quickly. Several times when I was a junior and senior in high school, I brought Parrot Bay rum to school and would pour it in all of my friends’ cups. We’d have a great lunch period and then go to Chemistry class. In college, a mixture of alcohol and David Bowie created some of the best dance parties ever to be had.
Looking back at other points of my life, it is pretty obvious that my drinking got a little crazy. Hanging out in an alley behind Sixth Street at 2 a.m., making out with a tattooed cab driver, being kicked out of a Cross Canadian Ragweed concert. A couple of times alcohol has made me an emotional bitch who yelled things I would not care to repeat here.
On mornings after times like these, I think about the many people from small towns who start drinking early and continue to drink quite heavily. My dad, siblings, ex-boyfriends, high school friends, and others. My uncle grew up on the same ranch as I did and he drinks multiple beers every day. When I took some of my college friends to Florence for a weekend, he drunkenly fell off his horse at the local beer joint/rodeo. The man who lives just down the county road from us, grew up in Florence and has a reputation of drinking an entire case every day.
I recently realized that I have not been sober for longer than 2 weeks in the past eight years of my life. I am seriously beginning to suspect that my intense hangovers are my body going through short-term alcohol withdrawal. Because alcohol helped me to have fun growing up, sometimes it is as if I can’t have fun without it. The other day I read about how alcohol can increase your chance of all cancers and heart disease. Why do I spend so much energy being vegetarian if the five glasses of wine I drink every Friday and Saturday can give me cancer anyway? Why I am trying so hard to get my dad to cut back on his nightly glasses of whiskey for health concerns if I myself throw these concerns right out the window?
I am tired of my dependence on alcohol and have decided to take a break. My goal is to go a month and then transition into a perfect state of being able to moderate, because that’s always been hard to do.
It has been nine days without a sip and it hasn’t been that hard. It’s more of an annoyance, like when others are having a glass of red wine and I immediately decide to have a glass as well but then remember, or when Joe needs me to help him meet the $10 credit card minimum at bars. When we go out I get tired sooner and want to go home. And I want to eat more. But last night, while soberly playing Balderdash with friends, I enjoyed my favorite food of chips and salsa, laughed so hard that I cried, and won the game. And today I felt great.
I suppose I am trying to revert to that childlike state of having fun, laughing, and being endlessly entertained by the pure existence of life itself. So I guess my break is also a sort of experiment to see if this can be done or if alcohol really is as magical as that summer day when I got tipsy for the first time.
Go
December 1, 2009
What to do when nothing comes.
What to write when nothing comes.
What to think when nothing comes.
I just sit and try
To make sense of life.
The rain makes it cold and the cold makes it rain
The sun so far away makes the night stay.
Time passes and it comes back around
The days are long and the air is hot.
The world is mine.
But still it seems
You need money to do everything.
What to do when you just don’t want.
What to write when you just don’t know.
What to think when thinking gets you down.
What to read when your mind can’t hold.
When nothing comes
You just have to go.
The Blood Between Us
October 11, 2009
Sitting on the front porch with my mom and sister, we are surrounded by a thousand acres of land. When the sun goes down later, distant lights will remind us of where we are. A few miles south is Florence, the town of 1,054 people where I grew up, and farther south is the city of Austin, where I live now. When I drive to the family ranch for a visit, we usually pass the majority of the weekend out here on the front porch, talking and drinking beer with each other.
“They just have it out for her and I find it absolutely pathetic,” my mom says, anger crisply delivering her words on Vanity Fair’s most recent Sarah Palin article.
For a second, I recall the 2008 presidential campaign, when it became all too tangible that my parents’ approval of Palin and conservative values was equally as strong as my disapproval and support for liberal beliefs. It was a time filled with strong arguments, temporary dislike, and confusion over how I could share blood with this man and woman, and how they could have borne a child like me.
But today, instead of blindly trying to prove my point, I feel a stronger desire to remain connected to my mom. So, I listen. After a few moments, Palin drifts off into the horizon.
My dad walks outside, wearing his daily uniform of Wrangler blue jeans, denim Wrangler shirt, boots, and a cap. The ice in his glass of whiskey clanks like a wind chime as he asks us if we want to go for a ride through the pastures. Soon we’re loading into the jeep, with Dad driving, Mom sitting next to him, and my sister, myself, and my boyfriend squeezed in the back seat. As the four-wheel drive pulls us through the cedar trees and rocks, the jeep’s tires roll over the first 18 years of my life. I breathe deep to take it all in. This land is a part of me, I remember for the first time in months. Living in Austin, where life is so different, it is easy to forget where I come from.
Chugging along the ridge on the ranch’s southern property line, we see some specs of people. My sister peers through the binoculars and tells us that it is Rob, my mom’s youngest brother and our uncle.
We drive down to him and hop out of the jeep. While several of his friends sit on the tailgate of his truck holding rifles and drinking beer, Rob walks up the hill with a dead bird in his hand. He rips the dove’s head off, plucks its feathers out, and plops the small blob of flesh in an ice chest–one of the first kills of another dove season–then looks up at us with his sun-darkened and aging face.
“Lindsay Anna, give your Uncle Rob a hug,” he says to the niece he sees the least.
Perpetually unsure whether to embrace Rob as family, I lean forward and almost stretch my arms out to him. But when I see the dove blood on his hands and shirt, I hesitate.
“Well, I would but you’ve got blood on you,” I say, pulling back and feeling stupid for wearing my nice work shirt.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little blood now?” he says.
As Rob leans forward, I back up, but he succeeds at giving me a one-sided hug, wiping a small amount of blood on my arm and shirt. I stumble on a spiny bush and my sister catches me before I fall to the dirt.
“Lindsay Anna, you vegetarian city slicker,” Rob says with disgust.
“Well, she did go to UT,” Mom chimes in, referring to the University of Texas, which has a debatable reputation among some as a liberal institution.
“That just goes to show, they don’t learn ya everything ya need to know in college,” my uncle says in response.
Based on what my family has said in the past, I assume Rob is implying that UT taught me to be liberal, and in doing this, robbed me of life’s most important and relevant knowledge: conservatism. Our deepest divider has reared its head.
My family and I discovered our conflicting political opinions during my first year in Austin. The Bush-Kerry campaign was underway and I was a freshman at UT taking a class on homosexuality (only in Austin, my parents would say). Four years later when the polls showed Obama would be the next president of the United States, I stepped outside my friends’ champagne celebration to call my mom and gloat. She had quit watching the poll results a few hours before and heard the news for the first time from me. She said she wasn’t surprised, but sounded genuinely sad. Then she told me she was scared. I quickly brushed this off as crazy conservative thought.
But something happened in between that night and now: I began to want to understand those whose veins hold the same blood as mine. I noticed this transition earlier that afternoon, when my mom talked about Palin and I didn’t argue. It would happen again a few days later, when watching President Obama’s Congressional address on health care. Instead of writing these people off as ignorant Republicans, I tried to wrap my mind around their case (with the exception of Joe Wilson). I even read some conservative political commentary.
Rob is wrong about UT brainwashing me to be liberal, but his words that night were somehow right—people don’t learn everything they need to know in college. It has taken me close to five years to realize and admit that my family’s conservative views are legitimate. I’m not sure what caused this to happen, but it wasn’t because of anything I learned under the ivory tower. Perhaps it’s that desire to remain connected.
While I still do not agree with them on many issues, especially health care, I see now that the road in between Austin and Florence really isn’t all that long. And when it comes down to it, what lies on each side doesn’t really matter. As long as we remember what lies in between.
The War
September 18, 2009
Strange how September in Texas is cool this year
Sitting in my back yard with a beer
I wanted to cover my arms from the breeze.
But perhaps I only felt so chilly
because I just spent eight hours frozen to a desk—
Office life, how silly!
It’s the dreaded AC battle, and it has returned.
Annoys me so much I feel the frustration burn.
Up to 77, then back down to 75.
Funny, but not, how two degrees makes my toes so blue;
For me,
there will be,
no more open-toed shoes.
Are you really so hot?
Oh wait, it’s the sun?
Somebody save me, this is not any fun.
I wonder, but doubt we the cold will ever say,
“Hey, I’m freezing, step away from the thermostat—step away!”
Instead the cold and the hot avoid a solution.
The silence builds and builds up the tension,
then the door shuts and up starts the bitchin’.
I don’t enjoy this negativity, really, I don’t.
So Monday I will wear long sleeves.
But damn those appendages—so naked they freeze!
But I shouldn’t curse my own fingers and toes,
for they come in quite handy.
Like when I’m off work,
usin’ my hands
to shake my martini.
So the hot ones and their beloved AC won’t take these little guys;
and besides,
it’s a freakin’ beautiful 79 degrees outside!
To and Fro
September 3, 2009
The following is the first official post of PoCo, a series of essays on life [po]st [co]llege.
—
One year after graduating from college, I exist in a very strange place.
I am a young, employed American when it’s not as easy as it once was to have a decent job. I know I am, and sometimes I do feel, lucky. But I also inhabit another world in which I struggle to feel comfortable in this new life of desks, hours of sitting stationary, long meetings, and bumper-to-bumper commutes.
Monday through Friday I wake up in the morning and drive to an office on the other side of town. As my car transports me to where I’m supposed to be, I think about the gloom of another day filled with the same tasks. I know that I will not experience anything different or extraordinary and I most likely will not be challenged or feel deeply passionate about my assignments. Sometimes when these thoughts arise, I put in Bob Dylan’s album Desire, turn it up loud enough to drown out the pavement, and let his voice and stories swallow my reality.
I arrive at the office, go inside, make a cup of tea, and sit down at my desk, where I will be for eight more hours. I work with some great people and the job usually isn’t unbearable. Other times it can be. After sitting for so long and staring into the single consuming eye of a computer, my mind is often tired and numb, as if static waves are radiating from my brain and out through my skull. As this old record spins over and over for the standard 40 hours each week, I become one among the masses. Still, when I look out the window about two feet away from my desk, I see the whole universe and feel so small.
A full year has passed since I received my diploma, but it doesn’t feel that way. My days blur into weeks and my weeks turn into pay periods, and the pay periods then become a ceaseless non-measurement of life. Time consists of a continuous routine of going to sleep, almost always before midnight, waking at 7:30, and coming home around 6:30 in the evening. After I walk through the front door and eat some dinner, I start searching for the energy and focus to work on projects that I am truly interested in. And though the dreams for my ambitions have never left me, I only sometimes manage to execute them.
During a recent weekend at my family’s ranch, I talked about these emotions with my parents, whose lives have always been consumed by their jobs. As we sat around on the front porch in the heat of the dry Texas summer drinking beer and iced tea, I expressed to Mom and Dad that my current situation is not what I want in life. They might understand, but they also tell me things like: “Very few people are able to make money doing what they love,” and “40 hours a week is not that much.” I think they think this is a phase that I’ll grow out of it. I’m not so sure I want to.
One day while running after work, I finally understood why this new life feels so unnatural, why these new shoes don’t fit. After finishing the dirt track around the lake, I walked over to a nearby pond to stretch. When the muscles in my legs began to loosen, I sat back up and laced my arms around my dusty knees. Staring into the distance, I noticed a group of young girls playing in the shallow water. Their laughter was audible and continued growing louder as they had more and more fun. I watched them for some time, taking note of how human they seemed—laughing, exploring, interacting. At a certain point, I realized that it wasn’t them I was watching. It was myself.
I too used to be so innately human. And now I feel as if I am crossing over from youth to a modern adulthood preaching a creed with which I disagree. What is the point of working one’s life away when it doesn’t create happiness? When two of my loved-ones died last fall, I decided that I want to live as if I truly grasp the significance of the realization that life is much too short to live for the sake of making money.
While I think these thoughts, I feel empowered by an intangible freedom that might be waiting for me in the future. I often find myself imagining the job that is so right for me that it doesn’t feel like work, but instead gives me the opportunity to simply be who I am and do what I love. But ultimately, I cannot outrun the looming dark cloud over my head: I am employed when 9.4 percent of Americans are not. I feel guilty for feeling more stuck than lucky.
Lately I’ve been focusing more on the good and somehow managing to work a little more on the projects I care about. And, though it was painful, I just made it through the first summer of my entire life spent working full time. Sometimes I think I’m starting to know how to live, but I remain to be uncomfortable most of the time. While I keep trying to find my place, I guess I’ll let the pavement carry me to work again tomorrow.
Human out of Water
August 27, 2009
It has been more than three days since I returned from a cruise of the Mexican Caribbean, and I still feel as if I am contained on a vessel that is floating, bobbing, and plowing its way through the vast ocean waters. Somehow it took less than one week for my perception to be altered from that of a land-dweller to something living atop the waves.
The night after returning to the drought-stricken land of Texas, I mentioned my symptoms to some friends.
“I have been so tired and I’m dizzy and woozy,” I said while making googly eyes and holding my arms out in front of me to illustrate the act of trying to find one’s balance. One friend questioned vertigo, the other said “No, isn’t that called sea legs or something?”
Sitting on my bed later that night, it was as if I was instead sitting on the small twin bed inside my cabin on deck M aboard the Carnival Ecstasy. The walls and floor of my room seemed to be shifting up and down in a gentle swaying motion and my brain felt like it was doing the same thing inside of my skull. With these symptoms persisting for more than 48 hours, in addition to my friend’s mentioning of a possible diagnosis, I decided to google the term “sea legs.”
Not one to overly worry about seemingly-minor health concerns, I confided all of my trust in the medically-sound Wikipedia. While scanning the article I learned that sea legs is a common and minor experience of recent cruise-goers and is also called land sickness.
When I read the words “land sickness” on my tiny iPhone screen, they looked strange. When I said the words to coworkers at the office today, they sounded stranger. And when I write the words right now, they maintain to be a strange pair, even stranger than the words “sea” and “legs” resting right next to each other. And though I’m no longer worried about my symptoms, I have been thinking an awful lot about the concept and causes behind this condition.
How could a human become sick simply from having their feet planted on land after a brief rendezvous with the sea? While seasick on the cruise, I looked forward to the feeling of walking on solid ground. So why am I so nauseated and fatigued and out of it?
After considering these questions for awhile, I’ve decided that perhaps land sickness represents one of the beauties of being human. We have evolved to adapt so well and so quickly to the many different situations we somehow end up in, that if I ever wanted to, I could spend my life on the ocean, eventually with no need for Dramamine, day long naps, or white bread to quell my nausea-suppressed hunger.
People actually do live out there, on oil rigs and boats and ships, sometimes for fairly long periods of time. People live in space too, and even they learn to adapt to a zero-gravity environment. But because nothing, no matter where one has lived in the past, feels as good as lying on hard dirt and green grass, I hope my body soon remembers that I am at home.
For the Sake of My Legs
June 11, 2009
The one by my desk is black, maybe with some speckles of gray. It has wheels and arm rests and a lever to adjust the height. It is touted to be quite ergonomical, and though I find it more comfortable than others, I hate this chair.
During a weekly meeting today, I sat in a different one than I normally do. It was wooden with a slightly rounded back. My ass remained glued to it for about two hours, and when I stood to walk up the stairs and begin sitting in the aforementioned chair, I realized that I hate the wooden one as well.
When it was time for me to return home, I walked down the stairs and sat down (again) in the seat of my car, which is really another name for a chair that can sometimes be comfortable enough to sleep in during long road trips. I sat in this one, made from a dead animal, for the entirety of my commute home through traffic and traffic lights. When I walked in my front door, the first thing I saw was my couch–a long blue chair, really. Though I felt tired from a full day of chair-sitting, I couldn’t bring myself to lower down onto the fabric.
My cat dozed for more than hour in a big plush chair in my living room. He does this for the majority of the day, I’d say for at least 8 hours. I wonder, how can he allow his body to become part of this chair for so long? His eyes are closed and he looks more peaceful than I ever do while sitting in my chair(s). Does what you think about, not think about, or dream about whilst in the chair make a difference?
After a long slumber, the cat is now running wildly from the kitchen into the living room, bounding off furniture, and doing it all again. Later, I myself ran and walked around outside. I strangely felt as if I were a human, a real and alive being.
(I just realized that I was sitting in a chair, a white metal one with a vintage cushion, while writing this entire story.)
A Most Familiar Feeling
March 29, 2009
I sit on a blue plastic seat in the laundry mat near my home. As my jeans, underwear, and shirts wash in two machines, I still think about the two dollars and fifty cents cost per load and how much it will cost to wash all of my clothes, towels, and sheets, as well as dry them. Though it won’t be as cheap as using the filthy laundry room at the apartment complex near my cottage, thoughts of recently oil-stained red shirts convince me that the laundry mat is my only option.
With 33 minutes until washer-to-dryer switchover, I open the most recent issue of The New Yorker, which came in the mail a few days late. I want to read almost the entire magazine every week that it comes, but time to do so just fades away in a blur.
I graduated from college almost a year ago, and have since been working the standard 40-hour week in an office across town. I often realize that many adults in the United States work much more than that, 50 or even 80 hours a week. This thought creeps into my head more days than not, and it causes my mind to silently blow.
The pink cell phone in my purse vibrates to inform me that its time to dry the clothes, which I do and then go home where I will try to have a quick practice on guitar before going to bed. With still so much that I want to do today, I long every day for more time to do it. In my dreams, which I think about almost every minute it seems like, I have more time to do those things because my “job” consists of doing those things — and for less than 40 hours a week. This last bit, especially, never fails to make my parents, and pretty much everybody older than me, laugh with the wisdom of an American capitalist, a certain knowledge that I apparently have not yet acquired.
Which is more frightening — the thought that I will have to do the incredible to prove my parents wrong, or the thought that I might someday agree with them?
