there must be a bad moon

[teaberryblue]

i seriously feel like crap right now, so please pardon me for using my journal for ranting. this entry is, umm, somewhat protected beyond my usual friends' list, which isn't something i do too often.



I haven't been feeling great to begin with. I'm a sucker for safety, despite all my idiocy in accruing bodily harm and attracting trouble. And because of that, I'm now 25 and never had a reckless youth. Well, I did, but only when it was safe. I've been working full time nearly since I graduated, I've never left New York, and despite the fact that I have more money in the back than anyone else I know my age, I've never done anything cool with it. I don't have the time.

I haven't had a crappy job since I left college, unless you count porn as a crappy job, but I haven't had the typical slogging-it-out post-college jobs most of my friends have.

Part of me wants a house. I really do want a house; I have serious furniture lust and all, but it's seeming kind of stupid to have a house when I've never been anywhere. I don't know, all my rashness has to do with taking part in activities that may not be the wisest for preserving physical health, and not with doing anything really exciting that's more likely to leave me physically intact. When I graduated, I had itchy soles for a bit, I wanted to get out, I wanted to move to England, or, briefly, Georgia (yeah, because I was insane and thought I was going to go live on an artists' commune). I settled for NYC, which was, yeah, where I really wanted to be, but now instead of being there for one year, I've been here for three and haven't done anything. Living in a city does nothing for you if you have a full-time job. Making money is worthless if you spend all your time doing it and have no time to spend it.

Fuck. I'm not a romantic, but I wanna be a starving artist. I want to have time to do what I want to do. I know what people mean when they talk about being chained to a desk job and I don't want that to be me. But I don't know how to leave. It sucks to be chained to something that you really, honestly think is cool and don't want to leave. But I wanted to be a writer and so far I'm just screwing myself over. You can't get successful at something if you don't start, and writing takes a damn good long time.

So yeah, now everyone else is starting back to school, and Mikey's got his first year as a teacher starting and it's been three years and I haven't done crap with myself.

Well, I have. I'm supposed to be accomplished, and I've supposedly accomplished a crapload more than most people my age, but, well, when it's not what you set out to accomplish, it takes some of the edge off it.

I want to go back to school. Maybe just cause everyone else is starting school cause it's the fall, but, I dunno, maybe I just want to get better at things. I'm in one of those moods where I feel like everthing I've ever done is crappy.

Argh and it doesn't help when you've lived alone for two weeks and the person you've lived with for the past seven years comes back for one night and you realize that, god, you'd rather live alone. I DON'T want the television on first thing in the morning. I don't want it on every minute of the day. I don't want someone trying to start conversations about stupid crap when I'm trying to run out the door in the morning. I don't want to have to go eat just because someone else is hungry. I want to play music, which I can't do with the TV on. I want my house clean, dammit. I don't want someone vying for my attention when I don't want to give it.

I guess it's good I've realized that. There's no fucking way I'm going to make a decent parent anytime soon. And if Mary Shelley knew what she was talking about, that kinda means I have to write.

To top it all off, I went to bed earlier than I usually do and woke up with a fucking migraine to end all migraines.

"...and that dirtiest of all dirty words, promising."

Someone tell me to shove it. I'm becoming a walking cliche.

Comments

[haruspexy.livejournal.com]

you don't know how hard it was for me to compose some kind of semi-intelligent response without waxing on all philosophical about puzzle pieces and turkeys without wings and all that shit. I think I've been reading too much orson scott card.

there's no law that says you have to go through the whole struggling post-college student thing at any one certain time. there's nothing that says if you haven't mucked around for a few years by the time you're twenty five, you'll never get the chance -- I mean, not that I would ever hold him up as a sterling example of humanity or anything, but my dad's doing it at 55.

take a few months off and write. if you want to go to london (or, possibly, edinburgh, or maybe athens, or, on a slim chance, milan) for four months and do it there, just get an apartment or something, let me know and, assuming acceptance to the relevant program, I'd split the cost. but I mean, do it somewhere, if that's what you know you want to do now. or if you'd rather, find a grad program and go back to school. with all the colleges in NYC, I bet you could even find a post-bacc program with classes you could take.

jobs can be replaced. time can't. do something. :P

(and I completely understand the wanting to be alone thing, considering that I have actually fantasized about slitting my roommate's throat using the broken sherds of her RENT cd. :P)

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

you mom just told me to try calling you garrrrrrrrr i hate murphy's law.

anyway, i just had a brief conversation with my mom about moving to london. i'm gonna look into maybe taking a few classes at U of L, she's gonna talk to people she knows about housing and see if we can come up with something.

if you're serious about splitting a place, i'll try and look into that, i don't know what housing costs are like there but they can't be more than NYC and i have the money in my bank to be able to live in my place for two years at the moment, so if you wanna do that, you could pay whatever you can (which is what i did with jo in my first apartment, i paid what i could and her parents paid the rest). of course, it's probably way cheaper for you to live in dorms anyway, but if we're in the same city, we can at least pretend to force ourselves to be social, even if it means writing in a pub instead of in our rooms :P. i guess we'd have to ship our playmobils over there, though.

i talked to mikey and naturally he hated the idea but i think i already told you that.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

yarr i'm being lame and double-posting but birkbeck offers like a million creative writing courses AND an art history class on medieval venice as part of their continuing ed department. which means i can just sign up and not even bother with applications.

[haruspexy.livejournal.com]

eeeeeee cool.

yeah, just let me know. I need to start sending in applications soon, but I really want to end up in London, if only because I've already gone through the language barrier thing once and I don't need to learn Greek on top of Italian. :P as long as I can get in somewhere, I'll do it.

[batchix.livejournal.com]

Hmm... how about we swap places? Just kidding. :3 If you want to go back to school... GO BACK TO SCHOOL. Go back and declare a major and pretend to get a degree and just take the classes you want. Or get a degree or another or whatever. It's YOUR LIFE. And for Godsake take a vacation. You know you can get a month long train pass for anywhere in the united states for pretty cheap, right? Only condition is that you have to go into to Canada at some point. Or go to Europe if that's what you want. Take a year off, ask your job if you can have it back if you took off for a year... and go. You're always welcome to come visit us if you want. I know it's the boonies but it is DEFINATELY different than NYC!
And I know what you mean about wanting a place of your own... sometimes I want that too, except when I get away from dave for too long I miss him terribly. X3 And especially the whole TV thing... I hate TV noise. :Þ Anyway... I'm being incoherent. Either way.. hang in there and be brave and take chances and everything will be okay. *hug*

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

thanks. i did go to italy, and i think that's part of why i want to get out of new york. maybe once i quit my job for sure i'll use up all my vacation days and come out there. :D i want to check out your dolls. hell, maybe if i take time off, i'll try making my own dolls.

i dunno if i want to go back to school for sure, i just know i want to get out of new york for a bit. yarrr.

you and dave should check out the pirate game :D

[batchix.livejournal.com]

Have you ever been out to the midwest? It's more than just flat prairie... it's actually quite beautiful- well here anyway. You get tired of it too, but it seems like our generation can't stay in one place too long. :/

And if you want to see the dolls... you'd better come soon. I'm going to start selling them in the next few months! XD Hopefully anyway. e_e;;

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

i don't know what counts as the midwest, really, i've been all over ohio when i was looking at colleges, and i've been to chicago a bunch and a couple places in wisconsin. i think that's the sum total of my travels in the US that weren't along one of the coasts.

i was going to ask you about the dolls, actually. do you have any idea what you're thinking about for pricing?

[batchix.livejournal.com]

Well... I'm probably going to start out the bidding at about $50. I expect that it'll be about $10 shipping what with getting packing peanuts and what not. I'm HOPING to get about $200 a doll, but we'll see. I'm thinking of making a tutorial on how i make them next time I rent a digital camera(my web came can't show detail well). The ladies on the OOAK list I'm on sell books on EBay on how they make their wings... maybe I can sell the secret of how I make my dolls? XD Ugh... all about the money right now.

[penwiper.livejournal.com]

Hon, you want pathetic - I'm still living with my parents. I've had one date in my life, and never been kissed. I'm still working on getting my actual driver's license. And I have yet to have a genuine real full-time job.

There, feeling better now?

The problem with that 3am feeling is that it doesn't respond to logic very well. You can shove sensible reasoning at it all you want and it still doesn't squash it.

I used to stress about the fact that I didn't do any of the stupid things people my age do, or do anything particularly wild. I still have the occasional bit of angst over that, but mostly I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a hopelessly placid and boring individual who is content to be, well, content. The thing is to realize that people move at different speeds. Some people have a wild youth - some people have a wild second childhood. Heck, the most fantastic people at college are the older people who go back in their 40s and 50s. And for every book you pick up that reads 'The author was first published at age 13...' there's an author who wrote their first book in their 30s or 40s.

Try not to be overmanipulated by the general perception of age-based deadlines - when you're ready to do something, you will.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

you're one of the people i'm jealous of, though. i haven't gotten to sew anything in four years or sculpt in almost three. i would have killed to have been allowed to stay at home after college so i coul dhave finished a manuscript without having any pressure to support myself, and it doesn't help that while i was given a hard and fast deadline to get out of the house three months after graduation, my brother AND his girlfriend are living in my parents' basement getting to build furniture for fun because he got kicked out of school.

i don't care so much about getting published; it's just that all i want to do is write. but i kind of have to support myself to do that, and it would be nice if i could actually support myself on the actual writing, you know? and it takes a damn long time tobuild up a career to the point where you can support yourself, and lots of people never make it that far. i'm not one of those people who has dreams of writing the great american novel and getting fabulous acclaim, i just wanna be able to sit at my desk and write all day. it's either writing or drawing, and i'm not good enough at drawing to support myself drawing the kind of stuff i actually want to draw and not clipart.

[liret.livejournal.com]

I agree with Sara - If you want to do something, do something. I had so many plans for the last year, since I was staying home and only taking a couple classes. Instead I wound up doing nothing -- the really good voice lessons from Hartt seemed like too much money, the drawing classes I wanted to take never fit with my work schedule, and the trip to Europe I wanted to take this summer would have been too long away from work. So now I have a savings account, but I wish I'd used my time better.

[desstrikesback.livejournal.com]

Okay, um, I guess everyone already knows that I'm crap at giving advice or whatever. So I think I'll just stay away from that, and I'm gonna be really just unhelpful and give you a hug. Because you sort of sound like you need a hug. And if you don't, well, um, I'm giving you one anyway.

********BIG HUG FOR TEA**********

I think it's not quite as effective as if I were actually in NYC and could give you a real hug, or if I were, you know, actually good at giving advice and could give you some really good advice, but I hope it makes you feel better.