The end of an era, and what I learned before class was over.
Mad Andrew left for Fermilab two days ago, and should arrive sometime tomorrow. We had a little party over at his place on Monday night, him and Angela and Rob and Shai and John and me, to polish off the contents of the liquor cabinet and dismantle what little remained of his apartment. Two years of accumulated stuff would not fit in a Ford Contour or in the dorm he's moving into up at FNAL, so he moved out in what amounts to a rather Buddhist[1] fashion: get rid of all non-essentials. I offered him $20 for the leather executive's desk chair that I've drooled over since my sophomore year, and he said "If you can fit it in your car, you can have it." So that kicked off a cheerful examination and scavenging of all his personal effects, everything from a futon to a couple of potholders.
Leave it to Andrew to go Tyler Durden on us: you are not the contents of your apartment. Bravo, man. I can't say as I'll be comfortable doing much the same in August.
I've basically given up on the idea of having an apartment of my own this fall. Both my previous plans backed out on me, I refuse to pay $500/mo to a management company for an apartment the size of an airmail stamp, and I'm really starting to miss high-speed Internet access. So I mailed off my housing application Tuesday evening. I'm going into the dorms.
This concept bothers me a lot less than it used to. C-kun is cool with the idea of taking care of my furniture and the cats, I know the food is good because I've eaten in the UI cafeterias before, and I'm looking forward to having someone else vacuum my carpet and clean the bathroom for me. I'll be able to stay in touch with people who matter to me. I'll be right there on campus for stuff like art flicks in the student-union theatre. I can narrow my focus tremendously and not have to worry about it.
LESSON ONE: YOU CAN SPREAD YOURSELF THICK IF YOU WANT TO.
I remember high school. I remember track, debate team, Texaco Star Academic Challenge, desperately looking for a boyfriend, Writers' Guild, Shakespeare Festival, and five honors classes all in one school year. I remember this compelling sense that these were all things I just had to do, and no genuine sense of where that compulsion came from. If I knew then, I don't remember now. I know college was like that, with the first major (Mechanical Engineering), then the double major (English and Radio/TV), then the triple major (+ Anthropology), then the single major with the minor (Creative Writing/African Studies), and finally the single major I graduated with (Linguistics). Not to mention a part-time job through all but the first year of college, one semester where it was two jobs. Plus the anime club and the Objectivist club and ... and ...
Six and a half YEARS it took me to graduate. I used to feel guilty about that. It doesn't surprise me any more, though. That's why I don't feel guilty: the thought "You're smart, why haven't you graduated yet?" was so surprising that it upset me. But it's okay now.
I left out the marriage/adultery bit up there. That's a category unto itself, and a more recent lesson -- so new the paint isn't dry on it yet:
LESSON TWO: ANOTHER PERSON'S INTEREST IN YOU CREATES NO OBLIGATION ON YOUR PART TO SLEEP WITH THEM.
In high school I fell in love desperately, then clung desperately, then went to college and felt alone and clung to other people desperately. Loneliness beat sense-of-wrongness into the dust, until somewhere I convinced myself that the sense-of-wrongness bit was itself wrong.
Bad motivation. Bad, BAD motivation. No biscuit.
I started working tech support at Everyone's Internet a few weeks ago. In this department every day I see a marvellous buffet of charmingly geeky guys, guys of adorable wiry bodies and encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, clever remarks and enticing wit. Six months ago I would have been beside myself with delight, knowing that here -- da-DAH -- were a bevy of worthwhile human beings who went out of their way to chat me up, who were only too happy to stimulate the most important sexual organ in the human body. I would have flirted. I would have been brash. I would have boinked at least one of them in the first three weeks of working there.
But I just don't give a crap about that right now. The attention is great. I'm going to be a standup kinda person about it and not exploit any of it, not offer anyone any kind of expectations. One, I'm tired of jumping into things and finding myself disappointed in the long run. But more important than that ... I no longer have that sense of "must deepen and maintain interest -- bring on the sex!"
I don't know where it went, but I'm glad it's gone.
It's late. More later.
[1] No, Andrew isn't Buddhist. But this is the sort of thing that Amber does when she moves, and that's her reason[2] for it.
[2] Why can't the Buddha vacuum under his sofa?
Because he has no attachments.
Leave it to Andrew to go Tyler Durden on us: you are not the contents of your apartment. Bravo, man. I can't say as I'll be comfortable doing much the same in August.
I've basically given up on the idea of having an apartment of my own this fall. Both my previous plans backed out on me, I refuse to pay $500/mo to a management company for an apartment the size of an airmail stamp, and I'm really starting to miss high-speed Internet access. So I mailed off my housing application Tuesday evening. I'm going into the dorms.
This concept bothers me a lot less than it used to. C-kun is cool with the idea of taking care of my furniture and the cats, I know the food is good because I've eaten in the UI cafeterias before, and I'm looking forward to having someone else vacuum my carpet and clean the bathroom for me. I'll be able to stay in touch with people who matter to me. I'll be right there on campus for stuff like art flicks in the student-union theatre. I can narrow my focus tremendously and not have to worry about it.
LESSON ONE: YOU CAN SPREAD YOURSELF THICK IF YOU WANT TO.
I remember high school. I remember track, debate team, Texaco Star Academic Challenge, desperately looking for a boyfriend, Writers' Guild, Shakespeare Festival, and five honors classes all in one school year. I remember this compelling sense that these were all things I just had to do, and no genuine sense of where that compulsion came from. If I knew then, I don't remember now. I know college was like that, with the first major (Mechanical Engineering), then the double major (English and Radio/TV), then the triple major (+ Anthropology), then the single major with the minor (Creative Writing/African Studies), and finally the single major I graduated with (Linguistics). Not to mention a part-time job through all but the first year of college, one semester where it was two jobs. Plus the anime club and the Objectivist club and ... and ...
Six and a half YEARS it took me to graduate. I used to feel guilty about that. It doesn't surprise me any more, though. That's why I don't feel guilty: the thought "You're smart, why haven't you graduated yet?" was so surprising that it upset me. But it's okay now.
I left out the marriage/adultery bit up there. That's a category unto itself, and a more recent lesson -- so new the paint isn't dry on it yet:
LESSON TWO: ANOTHER PERSON'S INTEREST IN YOU CREATES NO OBLIGATION ON YOUR PART TO SLEEP WITH THEM.
In high school I fell in love desperately, then clung desperately, then went to college and felt alone and clung to other people desperately. Loneliness beat sense-of-wrongness into the dust, until somewhere I convinced myself that the sense-of-wrongness bit was itself wrong.
Bad motivation. Bad, BAD motivation. No biscuit.
I started working tech support at Everyone's Internet a few weeks ago. In this department every day I see a marvellous buffet of charmingly geeky guys, guys of adorable wiry bodies and encyclopedic knowledge of trivia, clever remarks and enticing wit. Six months ago I would have been beside myself with delight, knowing that here -- da-DAH -- were a bevy of worthwhile human beings who went out of their way to chat me up, who were only too happy to stimulate the most important sexual organ in the human body. I would have flirted. I would have been brash. I would have boinked at least one of them in the first three weeks of working there.
But I just don't give a crap about that right now. The attention is great. I'm going to be a standup kinda person about it and not exploit any of it, not offer anyone any kind of expectations. One, I'm tired of jumping into things and finding myself disappointed in the long run. But more important than that ... I no longer have that sense of "must deepen and maintain interest -- bring on the sex!"
I don't know where it went, but I'm glad it's gone.
It's late. More later.
[1] No, Andrew isn't Buddhist. But this is the sort of thing that Amber does when she moves, and that's her reason[2] for it.
[2] Why can't the Buddha vacuum under his sofa?
Because he has no attachments.