The Daily Antics of a Hopeless Meanderer: 08/01/2004

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Couldn't have worded it better myself

"Other people's passion is status. So, for example, they endure years of boring law school and accumulate boatloads of student debt for the privilege of slaving under a 2,200-billable-hour quota for the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, with a futon in their office so they can sneak in a few "zzzs" in the middle of the all-nighters they pull to boost the chances of another lawyer's corporate client giving money to their corporate client.Other status seekers prostitute themselves to climb the corporate ladder. They put in 60-plus-hour workweeks and kiss up to their bosses, smilingly willing to uproot themselves and their families for a few years in Dubuque, Tuscaloosa, and/or anyplace else the company wants to dump them. They endure years of theoretical crap in an MBA program so they can put those three letters on their resume. And for what? So they may finally get a title of director or vice president, and after their 12-hour cover-their-butt workday, collapse on their sofa, get blitzed and stare at their oversized living room in their oversized neighborhood wondering, "Is that all there is?"

Wasn't I just thinking about this very notion? The article is entitled: "Do What You Love and You'll Probably Starve". There's food for thought.

Reasons why I'm better than an off-road ditch

For one, I'll provide an airbed, blanket and pillow. At exactly 1:09AM (I knew there was a reason I really needed that new alarm clock) Brian called to ask if he could crash at my place en route back to camp, as he'd been driving nearly the entire day. His other option was to pull over in the murky undercurrents of who-knows-where within St. Louis. Obviously it was not problem- all I had to do was essentially come out and open the door. In fact, it gives me some peace of mind that my friends aren't out there scavenging the highway abyss. So, as what seems to be the recent trend, I housed another wayward traveler. It's good to feel needed, even if it's only for a 6x3 ft. space in my living room. :-)

Monday, August 30, 2004

When logic leaves and strangers stop by

I think my neighbor in 108 is an alcoholic. Tonight, in a series of nights, though it was unusually early in that the banging normally starts around 3AM, I was severely agitated and somewhat worried about the raucous he was causing. I know for sure another couple down the hall have a very young child, who most likely just got to bed a little while ago. So instead of mistakenly coming to my door this time and collapsing in a drunken heap, I pre-emptively ventured out to see if maybe I could help. Turns out he has more problems than just substance abuse. He and his girlfriend have these amazingly volatile fights at random hours, and its supposedly up to my own discretion if I choose to not hear them. So I guess she locked him out of their apartment, and he was trying to get in by way of scaring the door open with his yelling and knocking. Hmm. No need to question sound logic there. So I offered him my phone (he didn't recognize that I was the one who helped her literally drag him back to their place last week). He tried calling their apartment, which was funny because we could both hear the phone ringing, and then the after-hours emergency number. In the end, both were no help. So he actually was pretty gracious this time, but said he'd figure it out himself, so I left him to his own devices. I didn't feel petty enough to tell him that she probably wasn't in the apartment because our doors lock from the outside, or that maybe he should stop this incessant NOISE. It's driving me insane- I can only imagine what other people must be feeling. This is way too reminiscent of college dorm life; something I'd rather leave in the repressed past. But I suppose on the bright side, I won't be spending tonight rolling a drunken roommate to her side in prevention of her drowning in her own vomit. Lovely image there. Wow, I had forgotten how much I hated freshman year until this exact moment. I guess growing up is learning to live with other people, no matter how much their lifestyle impinges on yours. All I have to say is, God bless headphones.

I suppose one of the identifying attributes of a quasi-adult life in which I'm aspiring to lead is losing sleep over worrying. I worried about money of all things; how adult is that? :) Being a life long student thus far, besides giving me major self-esteem issues and various other complexes, has really only provided me with a huge sum of debt. Hmmm, carry the five, divide by six figures, and I owe 1/20th of a MILLION dollars to the government! Not to mention that I haven't paid off my computer, and still have to buy about eight books this term. All this, for what will be after this next year, three measely initials after my name. Oh how I wish I knew this was somehow all going to be worth it. What about the next five years? Do I really want to spend it toiling in front of an endless series of microscopes and working on a thesis? What ultimate satisfaction can be gained from that if I'm questioning my passion for this field now? Are we all really meant to fulfill our own phrophecies in a chosen profession? And what's with all these unanswerable questions?
Maybe it's the combination of lack of sleep and sudden stressors, but I'm just shy of having to track down a brown paper bag and putting my head between my knees. I definitively order this rising panic attack to go away. If I were rational at the moment, I might be able to put all things in perspective, but as I'm not, I'll most likely stew in a pot of worry all day. Well, as this is putting even more emphasis on my current concerns, I must go find some form of distraction, in say, work (I figured since I'm here and all..) and maybe some sugar.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Life is pain; anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

As much as I have this obsessive need to keep busy, I'm really beginning to value this downtime. After all, I'm doing two of my favorite things, aren't I? I'm listening to the Garden State soundtrack at the moment, and I have to say, it's phenomenal, although I do have a bias for talented, no-name, possibly up and coming new artists; I guess I've always had a thing for the underdog. Last night I went to see the midnight showing of Princess Bride, a great way to become nostalgic and starry eyed, even if I've never been one for fairy tales. A realist at heart I suppose... Aaron asked me a question during the movie, of which I'm only now formulating a response to. He asked why it is that girls adore the guy with wisps of hair haphazardly strewn across his forehead. And I believe the answer is this, and I think it might be a universal truth that I hadn't ever considered before. I think that as females, we are innately nurturing and maternal, regardless of social upbringing or custom. We all need to be needed, and therefore the wayward hair is symbolic of something physical that we can fix by a simple, gentle graze of hand, which of course fulfills our genetic disposition, so to speak. Such social creatures are we. Even through eons of evolution, it is the small things that bring and trace us back to the very primitive. Darwin really should have focused more on human patterns rather than finches; he'd probably find this all very intriguing.

Blessed are they, the devoted and unquestioning

The ever-recurring issue of "church versus state" suddenly becomes much more personal than it has ever been before. For the past few weeks I've been feeling bouts of anger and resentment towards none other than the Archbishop of St. Louis, whom I've kindly dubbed "the communion Nazi". Not sure if this is a form of sacrilage or not, I couldn't help think if I deserved to be receiving communion this afternoon at mass, being that I'm not going to vote for W. Bush this upcoming election. Albeit the premise for his uncompromised position on abortion is valid and of course in alignment with church doctrine, where does the supreme authority reign on his opinion that Democrats, Independents, and other non-Republican parties alike should not be able to partake in Eucharist? In light of popularized depiction of church leaders indeed being fallible and moreover downright immoral, I've never fully gotten the sense that we should heed them that much reverence. But maybe I'm a bad Catholic... That shiny bubble of naiveness burst long ago, before the major national commotion of church sex scandals, when Fr. Furdik, our own parish priest was accused and admitted to molesting several young boys in our town, some of whom I knew, though not intimately. Since I'm on the rampage of Catholic doctrine that I don't wholeheartedly or even halfheartedly believe in, I've always been sort of hesitant on the "holier than thou" attitude that we tend to convey. God is God, in whatever sense we hold Him to be in, and there shouldn't be a hierarchy of importance and tyranny over others' way of serving Him, no matter how liberal it may be. So I must ask myself, why do I even attend mass or partake in Catholic tradition if I disagree with much of the organization as a whole? For now, the answer is two-fold- one being that in only seeing one higher being, I don't feel the need to differentiate between religions per se, and thus being Catholic is essentially the same as being Protestant to me (as outrageous as that idea may be), and second, traditions and customs are important to me; I like the familiarity and congruence of the way mass is constructed, and it reminds me of my upbringing. There is a sense of home which I cannot find anywhere else. And so however misguided my anguish over the delineation of how church figures will disagree with how I'm going to vote this November, I hold true to this rebellious streak, in that it is between me, God, and the feeling that I'm being true to my own beliefs on the foundation that what I've been taught, along with what I've learned, will find middle ground.

Friday, August 27, 2004

All that glitters is not always gold

Mere seconds after I had gotten off the couch to change the song on my playlist, I heard a loud crash follow, which I later identified as my one piece of "large" wall art tumbling onto the ground. This can be remembered as the same piece that earlier this year lost its glass frame in an unfortunate accident involving me and a simple task of hanging a picture. Upon posthumous examination, I found that for the past ten months, it had been miraculously imposed on the wall not by the metal backing, but rather a small, abnormal wedge of very lightweight cardboard.
So I asked myself, what is it that keeps "us" hanging on? Is it something equally as fragile? And how long does it last before its ultimate demise? Is it the idea of hope that keeps me waking up day after day, year after year, set about on essentially the same path? And if it is indeed hope, then hope for what? What makes those days that when I retreat from all living breathing beings and am so overwhelmed with darkness and misery so different from the majority of days when I have a cheerful conversation with Neil, the garage attendant, or smile at nameless passersby? I won't venture a guess, and maybe it's better to not question the grand scheme of things; just a notion that I will throw out into oblivion...

The Sacrificial lamb

So here it goes; suddenly every interesting thought haplessly treading in my mind vanishes, as this is somehow different from finding a cozy spot at Starbucks with my tall mocha, happily relinquishing an afternoon to scrolling out thoughts in my cherished leather bound journal.
My ritual morning walk to work did not spur, as usual, any profoundly inspiring thoughts or even halfhearted mediocre ideas. Rather, I hummed the theme song to Blowin' in the Wind, and laughed out loud to the phrase "feed the meter", which inspires the imagery of several coin-hungry parking meters in a fabricated birds' nest; the momma meter mouthfeeding manually her "little ones". Okay, so this path of logic is quite skewed, but then I scoured my memory for other phrases that brought about a funny picture. I once wrote a seemingly epic poem for God knows what reason, on dandelions (I should add that this was for a creative writing course in which we sat outside on the quad and had our discussions via 60's freespirit style). Thanks to my quirky, somewhat scatterbrained French teacher, I have never been able to forget that dandelion, or "dents de lion", translates to the "teeth of a lion". Here this powerful animal sits in the sahara, awaiting its next prey and meal, when an unfortunate gust of wind comes by and maliciously blows away all of its teeth. What a sad scenario. But I laugh whenever I think about it.

On with the usual tangents from normalcy, I was thinking that I might go see Garden State again, which I never ever do (go see movies twice that is). Wait, scratch that. There might have been an occassion in my 16th year or so that caused me to see a Freddie Prinze Jr. movie more than once. Blame it on the powerfully mind-controlling drugs called hormones and high school... But anyways, since then, it's been a scarce occurence for me to like a movie enough to even consider going to see it in the theater again. But I can't shake the pool scene in which Zach Braff's character describes to Natalie Portman the idea of home. Paraphrasing very badly, he thinks of it as an illusion; the physical setting is where you "store your shit", but it becomes nothing more than that because the entire entity of home encompasses not only shelter, but safety. Once you leave, it's up to you and you alone to find what is "safe". Family then becomes the people who all yearn for the same place and time; a moment when the universe remained still enough for us all to realize that we had this illusive notion. I choked back a tear after that scene because it was the exact description of what I've been experienced in the last five years. My previous existence was in this bubble, or what I saw as the "fishbowl". Two completely separate environments, separated by a thin layer of glass- inside is this sheltered, fabricated, ordered existence; outside is chaos, confusion. Each one envies the other's life. Moving away was synonymous with a magnanimous force which caused the impermeable membrane of glass to shatter. In "breaking free", I've not yet evolved the capacity to breathe in this new world, but I haven't given up hope yet either. I'm not sure if it's comforting to know that other people are living in a similar manner and can relate enough to draft an entire script upon this idea, or if it's infuriating to realize that I'm unoriginal. Regardless, it's something that only time will be able to play out.

It's Friday once again, and I wonder where oh where have Monday through Thursday gone. I'm sitting in a unusually quiet office, as my co-workers have not arrived yet, but when they do, the day will course through in a semi-predictable manner. I miss the other XX chromosome person who used to be here. Now I'm bombarded constantly with stereotypical "male" conversation; which not surprisingly revolves around sex and sports. Ah, well, I suppose I'll chalk it up to the fact that we're all under twenty-five, and this job has its ups and downs like any other. "Infectious disease" division, ha. I'm the only one with a Biology degree. But I admit, I'm enjoying what I do more and more, essentially because I like the people I work with, and I'm building up a large callus of resistence towards disparaging nurses who are really grouchy. And, as it is Friday, I look forward to being here all day, instead divvying up my time between here, the other office, the med school library, or (gasp) school. Yeh for weekends! And so the day officially begins, as I tear myself away from what I really want to do all day, which is write, to settle on more mundane tasks such as patient fall risk assessment. Yes, it is as dull as it sounds. :) Til the urge to write again strikes, adieu!

The Daily Antics of a Hopeless Meanderer