It’s official: I’m no longer the protagonist of my own life.
I’ve now lost so many of my things that I’ve crossed a threshold of comic ridiculousness and turned into a quirky side character in my own life.
Notebooks, index cards, sweaters, flannel shirts, water bottles, a bowl of cereal that I just poured milk on…
Here’s to hoping I can blame this on pandemic-brain.
At age 35, it would be nice if I finally understood how time works. Instead, this is what it looks like when I try to take a late afternoon hike:
90 minutes before sunset: Intend to go hiking.
50 minutes before sunset: Actually leave to go hiking.
40 minutes before sunset: Arrive at destination and proceed to walk original intended distance, due to inflexibility.
10 minutes before sunset: Run to cover more ground until darkness makes this an unwise course of action.
Sometime after sunset on the line between dusk and night: Arrive back at car with no dire consequences having befallen me, thus reinforcing that I can get away with this, whether or not I actually like it.
In these days of coronavirus isolation, I already miss my Thursday morning writing routine at Dunkin Donuts.
Here is a metaphor for my general level of competence at day-to-day life skills: a soggy pile of deflated wet towels.
If you’re thinking, “That makes no sense because towels don’t inflate or deflate, unless I’ve been using towels wrong this whole time,” my response is: “exactly.”
★
We’re all so uptight. No dancing in public. No crying in public. No running in public.
If you consider yourself any type of non-comformist, it’s worth asking to what extent you still follow these social norms.
I wonder if it’s like this in countries that weren’t founded by Puritans?
When I try to answer the question of whether or not 2019 was a good year, I keep returning to my flagship anxiety problem.
Until I started listening to Blur again, I’d forgotten the feeling of the impending end of an entire century.
I’ve been struck by how many Blur songs use the word century, or reference its ending. In “For Tomorrow,” “he’s a 20th century boy.” In “Country House,” the city-dweller is “caught up in the century’s anxieties.” And of course, in “End of a Century,” “we kiss with dry lips when we say good night… end of a century, it’s nothing special.”
Time ends, flips inside out. We fall off a cliff and into a different world than the one we’ve known, even though it’s exactly the same, changing by events rather than by numbers. I lived almost the first half of my life in a different millenium.
This culture devalues sleep to the extent that admitting you slept well is actually met with hostility.
It’s more socially acceptable to say “God, I’m so tired today” than it is to say, “I have plenty of energy,” which will always earn you a dirty look.
If you say “Good morning” without sounding as though you’re about to take a bath with a toaster, then, well, you’re a perky fucker, aren’t you?
Eating well and exercising never get reactions like this.
A car is a tool, in the broad sense of the word, and since I live in the country, it’s a necessity. A means to an end. It’s a mass-produced machine, not a work of art, and many identical cars are still on the road. Yet, the moment that large, expensive machine stops working evokes all kinds of weirdly sentimental feelings. Even for someone like me.
