BLOG 602 is the latest project from Keep Alex Weird, an effort to write a 900-word essay each day until Jan. 7. He missed yesterday, but is working on making up for it. This is the third entry.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Okay, that supposed to be a literary interpretation of my cursor, blinking at me because I’ve got a horrible case o’ the writers block and planned on doing two essays today to make up for the fact that I got really busy yesterday and failed…
And the blink blink thing is the start of a really good post I wrote three years ago. I’m stealing from myself. Lame.
I’ve got 600 words of another essay done, but it’s just not there. Something about it’s wrong, and I realize that I could go back and fix it, but one thing I do not do well is revise. I’m not sure if I’ve just bought too much in Kerouacism or what, but whenever I go back and reread what I write, it feels awkward, so I do my best to just process whatever I have to write, get it down, and move on.
I do that with a lot of stuff, I think, more than just writing (and ladies and gentlemen, we have a topic).
There’s this scene in some episode of the West Wing where President Bartlett is talking about something to someone in the Oval Office, someone new, I think, and they’re dealing with a topic, (clearly, my recollection of this event is awesome) and Jed decides something, says “What’s Next” and then the other person tries to keep talking about it. This launches Bartlett into a whole thing about how when he says “What’s next” he’s moving on and everyone had better move with him.
To some extent, this is very much how I live, and I’m pretty sure at one point I adopted that exact philosophy, including saying what’s next whenever I was ready to move on. Honestly, it was a little annoying, I feel, so I dropped it, but the underlying sentiment is still there.
I am intensely into things, until I am over them. And once I’m over them, I’m done. This applies to a lot of things but, perhaps most problematically, it applies to people.
When someone new enters my life, regardless of the role they play, and I really really like them, they get a huge chunk of my resources. Time, money (usually indirectly, unless it’s a dating thing), emotions, all that stuff. I’m willing to bend over backwards to help the new people, or at least the current people.
Which is great for the new people. The old people, not so much.
Looking back on my friends from the pre-college days, I still only ever talk to two. I’ve known Dan since fourth grade and Kate (really) since high school. There’s some debate as to when Kate and I actually met (rumors abound that we were in the same fifth grade and some reports place us as far back as swimming lessons) but we weren’t really tight until our days sitting back to the wall outside Ms. Kahn’s class room, making fun of pretty much… well… everyone.
There are other people who have been in my life for a while, family obviously, but also friends of Graham and others. As far as the people in my life who are there just because I make it a priority for them to be there, it’s pretty much Kate and Dan, at least from that far back.
Changes in environment are always bad for me when it comes to stuff like that. A change in environment means a change in routine, and I quickly realize that a lot of what I considered friendships may have actually just been matters of routine.
Take my time at the newspaper. For those two years, and especially that last semester I spent helming the thing, I didn’t have much of a life outside of it. Those people were, good or bad, pretty much the extent of my friends during that time, and Jessica is the only one I still have any contact with, and that contact is much less than I’d really like.
For the most part, I don’t feel terribly bad about this kind of thing, unless I really stop to think about it. There are a handful of people in my life I wish I hadn’t let slip away so easily, but that number’s pretty small compared to the number of people I used to know, but don’t really anymore.
More of a danger than losing touch with people you want to keep around, as tragic as that can be, is keeping things longer than they’re of use. My five year class reunion is quickly approaching, and as the person who is supposed to organize it, I’m dreading it. The whole idea seems kind of artificial to me. The people who I really want to see from high school I make a point of seeing now. They’re Dan and Kate, and I’ve seen them both in the last week.
I wish, rather than I class reunion, I could just organize an Alex Reunion, and round up those people I miss and have a really big party and just catch up.
But… I know that wouldn’t work. The problem with the “What’s Next” philosophy is that it’s a unilateral decision. When I decide it’s time to move on, I’m moving on, regardless of who thinks
I’d be better off sticking around for a bit more. It’s a theory not that unlike burning your village down before you move on, just to make sure the invaders can’t get your stuff. It’s pointless, stupid, and really, all your stuff gets ruined anyway.
I’m working on it, though. I seem to be adding a lot of stuff to that list of things I have to fix.
Should be a fun year.
