Sunday, June 25, 2006

One is the loneliest Number

Though I've found two, three and occasionally five and seven can be just as lonely.
I've now been in Boston for almost four months and while I'm as settled in as I'm going to get, I still don't feel like I have (for lack of an English word) a chevra, or a group. (OK, so I found an English word).
Granted I haven't had that sort of group in several years; not since they all started getting married and moving to various cities around the country. But even so, I had a good core group of friends that I could rely on.
One by one that core group has gotten married off as well and moved around the globe, not just around the world. As much as I love one of my friends, with him living in Australia, there is a definite strain on our friendship.
I know that there are people in places like Chicago, LA, and Baltimore who I could count on when the chips are really really down, but I am finding myself really really needing that in Boston.
And I've come to realize more and more that as much as I love NY and plan on returning within the next few years, I will have to start from scratch in terms of friends. It's an odd thought and one that didn't come easy to me. I've always or since 1994 had a solid group of people I could count on whenever I lived or visited my favorite city on Earth. But marriage, fights, and general distance has lessened those ties and by the time I finally get my sorry ass back to the City, I don't expect those ties to be anything other than the occasional phone call followed by the rarer and awkward cup of coffee or beer.
How much of my affinity for NY is based on my happier memories of friends and good times past and how much is based on the actual city? While at this point I can't tell, I am sure it's at least split evenly and now when I think of NY it's no longer the people in it that come to mind as much as the institutions and cultural meccas. And I'm thinking this is a good thing.
When all is said and done, however, I am as of this moment, not in NY, but in Boston. I have made some casual friends through a book club and while I enjoy our bi-weekly excuses to drink and gossip, I have only really made one real friend out of that bunch and lo, she is moving to (wouldn't you know) New York within the next 2 months. Work is full of nice and friendly people, but very few are people that right now seem to be the sort who hang out with co-workers...or at least with me.
I feel like a broken record sometimes writing about being lonely and single and all that bullshit, but I think it's just been the overarching theme in my life for the past couple of years. I am truly truly longing to find someone and someones with whom I can connect; people who "get" me and who in turn I have "gotten". I do not expect that I am alone in this struggle. Most of us yearn for that sort of communion with friends and lovers, and maybe it is my bad luck to have experienced it so early in life. Maybe you're not supposed to have met people who really understood you at the age of 17 - because once they have left your life, you find yourself on the verge of 30 trying to recreate something that is similar to that experience. True, you can never really recreate the past, nor is it a good thing to try to do so; but if you have been happy and contented at one point, is it not human to attempt to seek out that same feeling again and again as you go through life?
I have not fully acclimated myself to that scariest of realizations: being alone forever and ever, no matter what else I've said till now. There is some slight hope somewhere in me that I'll be able to meet that right person with whom to spend the rest of my life and that I'll meet up with the right people who will be the rocks of friendship that I feel I am partially missing at this stage.
Problem is that I don't know which is worse: losing that hope or keeping it burning despite a preponderance of evidence that is it useless and misplaced.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

To Quote Homer, "Oh a GYYYM!"

Despite the fact that I am making near poverty levels at my exciting new job as book store whore, I have decided that I need to give a majority of it every month to a gym. Granted it is the best looking gym I've ever seen in my life: all beechwood and green glass, with brand-spanking new machines, a sauna, steam room and something called a "eucalyptus whirlpool". So yeah, the place is amazing.
Oh, they also have five (5!) big screen plasma TV's in the cardio area and godbless, today they were showing my favorite episodes of Friends.
But I figure I have to go around 4 times a week to make it worth my monetary while. And yes, it will be good for me too to do that, but getting up at 5 am four times a week and standing on my feet for 8 hours a day is not conducive to being gung-ho about going to run for another hour.
Here's to hoping it gets easier as time goes on...and hoping I can get up tomorrow morning at 5 am.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Fuck It

As my 30th birthday creeps closer and closer, I have started the hyperventilating and late nights sitting around wondering what the hell is going on with my life.
With yet another friend annoucing her engagement, another announcing her pregnancy, and another buying his second house, I cannot help but try and figure out where the hell my life took that awful turn where I'm almost 30 and totally and completely alone.
I keep hearing stories of "I know this woman who met the man of her dreams when she was 42 and now they're married and it's all great." Wonderful. Faboo. Mazal Tov. Personally, I'd rather not spend the majority of my life alone. Just a personal quirk I suppose.
And the kicker is that there's pretty much no one in my life who can understand how I'm feeling. I have a very very few male friends left who are not married, but I would say that they are all single for very very obvious reasons. Not that that makes it right, of course. And all the married friends, who believe so much that they know what I'm going through, are really just lying to me and to themselves. Anyone who has been in a relationship long enough to even consider engagement has absolutely no idea.
So I keep coming back to the theory that there must be something rather unright with me as well. If all my completely fucked up and morose bunch of friends can find someone with whom to while away the remainder of their lives, what is it about me that is so aborrent that I remain alone?
Thus far I have not been able to come up with a theory that would account for my total solitude...but I am still looking.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

A Chip off the Old Shoulder

I'm usually the last to admit this, but yes, I am an intellectual snob.
This is not to say that I'm some bigtime smartypants, but on occasion I know a few things. However, I have been highly intolerant of those whose knowledge of books, politics, history, and anything that isn't found on the pages of People. To my knowledge I've never snubbed anyone who falls into that category, but I know that I judged.
Barring one glaring example at my last job (and the acid dropping paranoid alien-abductee knows who he is), I've been lucky enough to work with non-mouth breathers. At Barnes and Noble, there is a far larger sieve where employees are concerned. A great retail employee doesn't necessarily need to have massive brain power - just selling power. And as such, I've been working with not the brightest colors in the 64 box of crayons. Nice nice people, but the sorts who say "I'll tell you what". But I no longer judge, for the most part. These are in reality nice nice people and I'm learning that sometimes that can be enough. Sure I'm not going to want to sit down and debate whether Von Karajan is the best Beethoven conductor with most of my coworkers, but I don't have to worry about any of them stabbing me in the back (literally or figuratively).
I know that there will always be some tiny corner of my mind that will scream whenever I hear one of them mangle the English language but I've stopped rolling my eyes and muttering under my breath and that has to count for something.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

And So It has Come to This

After a few months in Boston and some major soul searching I have attempted to carve out a new future for myself: about a year of manual labor at a retail store and then the payoff, around 2 months in Europe.
Maybe this isn't the smartest thing for a soon to be 30 year old to do, but the thought of settling into an office job "just because" fills me with intense dread.
Besides, if I don't travel now, when will I?
And so to finance my little jaunt, I have taken a job at Barnes and Noble. Perhaps a step above Starbucks - though maybe not.
I control an entire section of the store, though the actual responsibility is minor (a welcome change from my last job where I had a couple of million riding on my everyday duties). The people I work with are all essentially friendly and all essentially far younger than I. My direct manager is a huge fan of Invader Zim so that's a plus. And overall it's mostly hauling books and boxes of books around the store and doing basic book store maintenance stuff.
However--on Friday I came into work and glanced at the daily assignment sheet to get an idea of how my day was going to be broken down. For the last three hours of my shift, I was assigned to "MC". Not knowing what this meant, I walked over to the manager on duty and inquired. The MOD laughed in my face, and then said pityingly "This is just because the guy who was supposed to do it didn't show up". And what you might ask is "MC"? It stands for MasterCard. As in, wear an apron and stand at the front of the store and greet customers and inform them of the new B&N Member MasterCard. May I repeat - an APRON! A fucking apron!
So after four years at an Ivy League college, three years managing the daily runnings of a company, I have been reduced to becoming an apron wearing, credit card shilling Barnes and Noble bitch.
Lovely.
Of course most of the customers didn't want to be bothered and those who didn't bite my head off the moment I said "Hi" were ready to do so once I mentioned the reason for my friendly banter. It was a humiliating three hours.
Thankfully the next day my store supervisor actually apologized for making me don the apron and I'm hoping that translates into my never having to wear it again.
Only around nine more months of this and then it's off to Italy, Austria, Croatia...ahhhh.