In order to make myself continue to write, today I am not going to open, fuss over, and subsequently discard any of the 15 drafts I have open for this site.

Really. 15. Ish. More if I count text files.

Today I am just going to write and hit post and never look back at it again.  It’s more for me – the act and practice of doing – than for anyone else. Props to de Certeau here. Writing and walking and reading and being and strategizing. Let me make vague gestures in the absence of actually understanding anything.

***

It’s late afternoon on Friday. I am determined to celebrate, along with the working world, the idea of 48 hours of impending freedom from the capitalist apparatus, even if in practice it is not my future.

It is Friday, and while I sit here and wait for my tutoring client, I think about how glad i am I moved here, and I’m telling myself over and over again the rules by which I will now live my life.

***

It’s cheesy, but every time I drive east for this meeting or go east on the train and see HOLY SHIT A FUCKING MOUNTAIN HAS ANYONE EVER SEEN THAT BEFORE? – I feel glad all over again.

I hate being a cliche, but I hated more what I was becoming as I languished in my previous incarnation.

***

I feel I haven’t been here long enough to really Understand and Get To Know the city, but this is everything I want. Suddenly again I feel permanence and a sense of the future, rather than  an all-encompassing terror and feeling of impending doom. This feels like a place that will last. This feels like a place owned by hippies, geeks, and hipsters and at some point or another in my life I’ve been all of those. I live in a poor area. Every day I hear the extremely complicated issues of poverty playing out in extremely complicated arguments; I am extremely poor.

***

My best (only?) friend showed up, almost like a metaphor, so while having an unplanned roommate may be tense and stressful, it’s also saving me money and giving me some human interaction. I’m still terribly lonely. But I’d rather be horribly lonely here than ever spend another day in Indiana again.

***

Seven years ago on Wednesday, I left Florida. I haven’t been back since. I sat alone in the airport terminal as the late afternoon light bled out into evening. I got on a plane, and my long lonely post-college life began.