Lately

Lately I've been missing my old life. I understood how to get along on a deeper level with people, how to interact with the people I knew well and cared about deeply. Now I have all these new friends and this new job and a new way of being...well, it is exciting, but its also leaving me feeling empty sometimes. Like this thing with Alan. I don't really get it. Its so hard for me to let things take shape organically without a push from my side. I probably ruined it. Maube it will be less ruined after all the vacations, but maybe its ruined for good. I hope its not, I fell like I got a snapshot of his soul and want in, but I'm not allowed in precisely because I've decided I want it. I'm not interested in a lot of short term fun. I have energy but I don't think the energy for that will be sustainable. I want to get to know someone again. I want to get to know them in a way that helps me know myself. I want to begin my new life with some stability. I'm not having fun being single. I'm having fun at the prospect of not being single anymore. I'm missing Nick. Probably not him personally as much as I miss the stability that came with him, his sweetness, his kindness. I miss having him to hug me when I am down. I miss being down about things that have nothing to do with my sexuality or self-worth. I miss knowing what was going on in my life and not leaving it up to someone else, not feeling like everything is being left to chance. I hate this. I'm not good with the game. I just want to have normal, honest conversations with people, but I'm not allowed to. And I hate having to tell myself not to think about something if its occupying my thoughts. What kind of bullshit is that?

Stalking Run Amok

So I recently found an old friend's blog that was written so well and so full of genuine thoughtfulness that it inspired my own blogging. It turns out that my livejournal got a little too public...although I guess all blogs are public, this feels a bit more anonymous, since no one is subscribing to it. I am in need of real thinking, real pondering, doing something that really makes me question my values and status quo. I miss traveling. I miss meeting people different than me. I feel so stuck, just working a banal office job, barely paying the rent. When I got out of school, I was so sure of my specialness, so certain that I would find a job that really allowed me to shine like school did. Obviously, I'm still trying to find where my sparkle fits in to the world in a way that also provides health insurance. A little money to save for travel would be nice, too, but I don't want to get greedy here.

So here I am, here we all seem to be, for the first time our intellect means a lot less than charm, savvy, ugh, politics. I wonder if the spot of paint on my business suit has lost me a job yet. I'll never know. I won't be hired at any job where that type of thing will turn them off, mostly because I can't afford to buy myself another jacket. Beacon publishes so many books about the near-poor, the struggle of the middle class, and yet they pay their staff low-middle class salaries. They publish feminist books about how little women make compared to men, and yet they pay all the young women on the junior staff 10k less than most entry-level salaries in Boston. Really? I'm not saying they're sexist, I'm just saying that recognizing the social problems only goes halfway when it comes to solving them.

I guess that's part of the reason book publishing doesn't work for me. I've found that--even at Beacon--it just doesn't go far enough to make a difference in the world. Helping to physically create all these books just depresses me. Plus, as you might have noticed, my brain has become numb. I used to take care in the things I wrote, editing and rewriting with abandon. Now I treat everything like an email: quick, to the point, and a pain in the ass to have to do. I can't lose my ability to think and to write...if I do, what do I have left?