fake world

A former friend (and very funny lady) has been keeping a blog about her semester abroad experiences in Aix-en-Provence, France (I will not pretend that I don't read it with near-religious fervor and delight). She wrote recently about feeling like being abroad was like living in a "fake world." It seems, though--after a couple readings-- that it's the abundance of pastries, the meeting new people and seeing new things, and the making time to do stuff that's genuinely interesting that makes her world feel "fake." At the risk of sounding like a Carrie Bradshaw wannabe, I got to thinking about how often I put off what I want to do in favor of everything else, namely, what I should be doing. Life, after all, should be about making a better later now, not the other way around.

In a week in which the weather has been nice and I've been free to enjoy it, I have, more than ever, put off getting those pesky administrative things taken care of: taxes, planning my summer, presentation preparation and assorted assignments. All of those things, for better or worse, are my real life (and they're a real pain). But slowly--and verrry slowly indeed-- I've realized over the course of this week that getting those things done will make it easier to live my "fake life" and create my "fake world" in my real one.

And that feels good.

tea & self-pity

Back from a stint as a wandering job-hunter in the city, I realize now that perhaps I do need to spend the month of June in New Jersey at home and return to Gotham in July. It's a tough realization to come to only because I do miss New York so much and I hate feeling as though I'm not making any kind of productive use of, well, myself at the moment.

Went to several small cafés, tea shops, and bakeries in both Manhattan and Brooklyn (including a wine bar/restaurant a lá Max Café) for both meals and to drop my résumé off. Kyle, always the gentleman, accompanied me. I guess it all boils down to my desire to get out from inside the nest and out into the world. After all, I'm (almost) 20. =)

p.s. the American Apparel casting was like a hipster cattle corral/absolutely and hilariously ridiculous.

capitalism done right

the title of this post is the line I intend to use when the folks at American Apparel ask me why I want to work there. Rather than saying, of course, that I'm a struggling art history student with bills to pay and moderately expensive taste in sweaters. Thoughts?

In other news on capitalism, I found this extremely entertaining.

"the summer is young"

The title of this post is from the end of a friend's most recent post on her own blog, Margin Notes (link to the right). Her writing's always evocative, but for whatever reason that phrase really stuck: the summer is young.

The summer, after all, is young- at least for the next three months, until it isn't anymore. And I still don't have any concrete plan as of this very moment, as I sit here writing this and "the summer is young" is what I keep telling myself. But I'm going to wake up and it will be August 31st and I'll be saying, "where did the summer go?" The odd old couple that lives in the violently purple house beside my family's own muted, yellow one was also most likely, at some point, in the habit of telling themselves that the summer, their relationship, their eldest daughter (now in her 40s) was "young." And then, suddenly, none of it is. It's just a striking notion, that time moves in such a way that seems so ample from a distance. I have all of my life ahead of me and these are the days of my youth, sure, but they're numbered. And I think I like it that way. Or I will at least until I'm not young anymore either...

I say all of this to say that I need to get the hell off my ass and do something with my summer. But also to remember that sure, the summer is young on the second of June but'll be no spring chicken come just a couple of months from now.

I needed

to do some (late) spring cleaning and so voila! all my posts from before this very moment in time are gone, saved to my hard drive.

And good riddance.