Wednesday, August 27, 2008

It happened again

A flash of clarity followed by a mini panic attack. I'm thinking of giving up TV entirely since it seems to do nothing but increase my anxiety these days. A sociologist was talking about today's youth, more specifically men, or should I say boys. More specifically he was talking about how we all had grandiose visions of our future and no idea how to get there. As a result we wind up wasting out time and futzing around in school and dead end jobs and dealing with our frustration through binge-drinking, sports watching and violent porn. Ok so those last two items may be more about the guys he was talking about and less so youth in general. You know what, he's right. So is Kanye West when he talks about the career student who stays in school to hide from the real world in his song Good Morning. (awesome song by the way) I'm writing this from my sad windowless office where I'm killing time by updating a database. This is what my life is for the two weeks until I start school again. Another year of school will go by, I will continue to maintain a mediocre GPA (actually I have some fairly high goals for myself this year but I'm being pessimistic, don't interrupt) and then once again I will be lassoed into another long, tedious, pointless office job. Oh joy. And to what end? Where is this going? What am I doing? I have a day dream that I play more or less constantly in my head these days. I see myself graduated, with pretty good marks, getting my TOEFL certificate and then taking off to Japan for a year or two. From there I'll hop around Europe either teaching English or working as an Au Pair. Occasionally I'll use the money I've managed to save and do side trips to the Middle East and Africa, maybe doing some not for profit. I want to spend somewhere between five and ten years seeing the world before I come home and get my masters in whatever. Then masters, interesting career, maybe a book or two, possibly some politics and some more not for profit tossed in to the mix. Lots of travel, lots of children and happily ever after. I really don't know how feasible or likely this is. I'm pretty sure that Kimmel, the man writing about male youth and what the Hell is wrong with them would disapprove of my lack of direction, but on the plus side he'll be glad I'm not in the work place "confusing men". (he blames feminism in part for how fucked up guys my age are these days).

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