#reminiscing

Unknowing

Having exactly zero musical education beforehand, I literally had no concept of things like “higher pitches,” or designating which was faster of eighth notes and triplets. One can argue that knowing those kinds of things were important to playing in the band, but that’s also the point of the class — to learn more.

Basically, a significant portion of my education (and free time, to an extent), was determined by a test that asked questions without ensuring that I even understood the answers.

An annual autumnal anguish

Live like you’re responsible for someone else. You don’t have to make sure everyone you know is always happy, you don’t have to be available every time the smallest thing in life goes wrong … but at the same time, make it known that you’re available for people when they truly need help.

In the grand scheme of things, being available for that kind of comfort, advice or help is an incredibly small portion of your time, and will be a minuscule part of your life — but it could be huge for that other person.

The vagaries of getting old

You figure that out, though. There's a certain point where it dawns on you that you will continue to get folds and wrinkles and skin spots. You'll find getting up in the morning takes a little bit more effort, getting into bed a night feels a little bit better, and some midnight you'll discover the pure agony of hitting the bar after work when all you really want to do is go home and sleep.

Theoretically. So I've heard. Hey, I'm not in college anymore.

What's next

But none of that does any good. I know that's a tough prescription to take (much akin to a "Tough shit" offered when an accusation of unfairness is raised), but it's true. I struggled with it myself in those first few minutes after I went back to my desk after the meeting. I kept flashing back to that first meeting with the publisher, with the thoughts of loyalty running through my head: "I moved to Spokane, I quit my job, I gave my word that I wouldn't jump at the next incrementally better job ... You, on the other hand, laid me off/let me go/fired me six months in."

(These phrases sound like they're different, but only if you're not on the receiving end.)

Yesterday was Moving Day; as is tradition, that means today is "Not Moving Day," owing to the soreness from yesterday.

Moving is supposed to bring about an onslaught of different emotions: a twinge of nostalgia at leaving the place you've called home, sadness at altering/losing the different interpersonal relationships you've developed at said location, and excitement or trepidation at thought of what's to come.

I don't know that exhaustion can rightly be counted as an emotion, but the depth to which I feel it now seems to indicate it should at least be in the running.

After the third or fourth major geographical upheaval in 12 months (with a few minor phase shifts as well), moving just doesn't have the same impact anymore. Sleeping for the first time under a new roof felt just as comfortable as sleeping under the old one, which is to say "not very" because I never really "settled in" to the old apartment in the proper sense. Despite living there for eight months, the overly spacious two-bedroom apartment treated me more as a guest in a motel room than a permanent occupant.

Sure, I have some memories. The hideously overweight 40-some-year-old creepster who lived on the ground floor and sat outside his apartment 80 percent of the time, whiling away the days smoking, eating peaches or painting his fingernails a flamboyant hunter orange. That wouldn't have been so bad were it not for his completely obvious leering at women half his age or whenever he'd get in the mood to go shirtless.

Or consider the Albertson's grocery cart in the parking lot that mysteriously disappeared and reappeared on no set schedule, without rhyme or reason. Nothing says class like an Albertson's grocery cart.

Obviously, it wasn't all bad. Friends came over, drinks were drunk (and drunks kept drinking), movies were watched, great books were read and many a sleep was slept. But none of this served to dispel the ever-present air of transiency.

I'm now in Spokane, more specifically Browne's Addition, working at a job that seems pretty damn perfect for me (more on that later). The hope is to keep this apartment for quite some time, to break the moving cycle. At least long enough so that the next time I have to move, it actually means something again.

Hello, Seattle

Last month, I was pleasantly surprised to discover I had quite a bit of vacation time racked up at work. Once we passed through the busy season, I took the first opportunity to use it. I decided to take an entire week off and go camping - much to the surprise of nearly everyone I told.

Apparently, mine is not an "outdoorsy" dispositon.

Extra-ordinary powers

Everyone wants to be special. Everyone wants to have that one thing they're the best it, what they're known for - in many cases, what defines them as a person. I am not everyone. I accept the fact that I am good at a lot of things and the best at none just as I accept that I know a little bit about damn near everything, but am an expert in practically nothing.

2009 in review

It's Dec. 31, which means I’m parked in front of my television starting my annual personal Twilight Zone marathon. Though I stole the idea from the SciFi channel, mine’s better because a) there aren’t any commercials and b) I have the full complement (the original series and the remake from the ‘80s).

One year in

I don't often do much reflection, but this felt like a big step. Looking back on the one-year mark working at my college newspaper, the Washington State University Daily Evergreen, after getting involved on a lark. Then they put me in charge of the thing??