chubby babies are the antidote

lately i've had to observe a lot of endings, and they will bring that sense of sadness with them. the end of my $16 a month netflix subscription. the end of my graduate school loan money. the end of many friendships forged at carnegie mellon, as people drift away. the end of harry potter. God, that one was hard.

normally i really embrace change. i normally feel like when things have gotten soggy and boring, change can't be anything but an improvement. but for some reason i feel an especial desire, as of late, to struggle against being pushed into the unknown.

i know this feeling will pass, because i can't bear moping or wasting time, and i prefer if possible to, like Lucy Honeychurch, "play on the side of Victory." that means looking for jobs that will let me write, continuing to write on my own, going to the gym, playing my ukulele, petting my cats, strengthening current friendships and embracing new friends, and generally having hope.

i think this is really important; in fact, if you read that last line, and secretly laughed to yourself, a little cynically, i think it's sad that you've already given up, because you have the opportunity at every moment of your life, to see something beautiful, or something beautiful that you could do. if you didn't laugh, well, then, good for you. you could be friends with Kenneth Parcell.

no one is so perfect as to be able to feel happy all the time, and indeed it probably isn't healthy, but still. i'm sure we can all try to be positive, and that makes a difference. David Foster Wallace reminded me that you can find joy even in a crowded consumer hell, and actually i do try to do that. usually i look for chubby babies in shopping carts to cheer me up while i wait in the checkout line.

so while many of my friends have left, and things are ending, i might as well keep looking for chubby babies and writing jobs. let me know if you find either of those–and share the joy, will you?

one small step

tonight i realized i was the first person on twitter to tweet about 30 rock's werewolf bar mitzvah song. or at least, the first to script it as #werewolfbarmitzvah.

should i feel sad at such a lonely moment…or proud to be the first?

to be continued

it's funny but now that i am "getting into writing," aka as a formal career, i realize how much fun it is–and also how hard.

mostly because apparently formal writing is like this guild that you have to be born into, or know special secrets to infiltrate, like the freemasons. and even they have a website.

but i feel good about where i'm going. something tells me that this is right. i'm still temping at a job that's not paying me very much, but the people are nice and it's not too bad. meanwhile i've applied for a reporter position a pittsburgh company in the southside, so hopefully a) i do well on the interview and b) it is actually a legit cool job with decent pay and, please God, health care.

i also started writing for a new pittsburgh magazine called PGH, but that's upcoming, so, to be continued…