I'm drawing deeper into myself these days. I'm unsettled and thinking about all the people I know who are settling down and getting married and buying homes. Seems like everyone I knew has one or both of those things. I still feel like a teenager.
I turn 28 in under a month. My life is unfolding as planned and maybe that's why I'm not happy. There hasn't been any meltdowns resulting in me moving away with a middle finger toward my past. Instead, I think about things like saving money and returns on investment. I think about things like job security, bracket creep and getting my education.
The funny thing is how so many people I knew that were a few years younger than myself are even graduated from college and moving on with their lives.
And don't be mistaken, it's about 50/50 like-to-suck ratio having my old man as a roommate. Right now it doesn't bother me. I toured that apartment I listed on here, below. It was a lot smaller than I thought, plus it's in a janky, or rather as the owner put it, "impoverished" neighborhood.
I'm listening to classical so much these days. Right now for instance I'm listening to Chopin's Nocturnes. It's a magnificent double CD collection of music he wrote for night time moments. Anyway, it's revealingly beautiful. I listen to classical in my car, at work, on my iPod. It's weird how I go through these phases where I completely obsess on classical or jazz.
Anyway, I've noticed how I routinely get to feeling this way about this time in a semester. It's fatigue trending. I get absolutely sick of the arduous routine. It's super stressful and I ultimately feel unaccomplished. Typically the remedy is to take a trip. I'm going to SF with my family a few days after my birthday. It's the traditional family San Francisco rendezvous where my busy workaholic family escapes the doldrums of work and shit and blows a bunch of money on crap we don't need but can't possibly live without. My brother once spent a $1,000 on a lamp. I once bought a $500 leather jacket made of baby lamb. Any rate, it's a decent escape that sadly is latched to the stress of being with my old man for long periods of time.
I'm knee deep in my Masters right now. I have one more semester at a community college and then I'll hopefully be back at Cal Poly. It'll take about 2 years to get my work done at Cal Poly (includes a year of pre-requisites and a year for my Masters). Once I finish my Masters that's when the real trial of my life begins.
There really won't be much else I need to accomplish after I get my Masters, except for getting my Professional Engineer license. I'm afraid of getting tied to a job here. I'm afraid of my inability to take dramatic risks and pull the trigger on something I really want, like say, move to somewhere in Europe with Mary for a year or two on a work VISA. How I want to live in Portland for awhile and experience the bohemian life of creating art again. How I want to play in a band that is a complete Thermals rip-off.
Mary and I are going with my brother to Amsterdam and Paris in May with a small stop in some rich fellow my brother knows UK home. It can't come soon enough. I'm extremely dislodged right now. I endlessly daydream at my desk, vacantly staring into my monitor thinking about being on the East Coast driving the seaboard with the top down and the heater on as I weave through the blanket of crispy leaves and brickwork architecture.
I regularly question my belongingness in my life, asking myself what I really want and where I want it to take place. I have a rising suspicion that feeling doesn't go away, rather gets replaced by other feelings of inadequacy in the cosmos. How I sometimes wish I was a tradesman in Italy, strapping bottles, or shoeing horses or some other honorable--yet desirably meager--simple existence. Living diehard on a Vespa and weaving my own pasta dishes.
I have good friend who on a lark moved to New Zealand to attend grad school, rolled snake eyes on that objective and ended up with a new job and a striking life completely cutting loose of her California surroundings.
I also fear for the worst. I'm so bound to my regularity that I fear things that I hadn't feared before, like Mary moving away to pursue her life and graduate work somewhere not here. I fear that lack of significant friendships there are for me in this stupid philistine town. More and more I begin to resemble Paul Rudd in "I Love You, Man." Largely, albeit, due to the City I live in devoid of interesting people my age.
Mary and I were talking about this subject over last weekend and I had a stark realization. I spend lots of money on my wellbeing, buying expensive designer clothes, buying expensive commodities, meals and watches and other pointless bullshit because I'm pretending to live the life I don't actually have, trying to make myself a part of a community of free-thinking connoisseurs that do not actually exist here. Mary said that I'm a person who really ought to be living in a place like New York City or San Francisco. And I think she's right.
I hate to admit that I'm regularly checking the want ads for City's I'd rather be working. I'm sure as the economy mends in the next three to four years we'll see an increase in the number of jobs.
Plus, after I get this Masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering I'll be able to explore jobs in the burgeoning sustainability sector and maybe find more worth elsewhere.
As for now, I figure I'm destined to remain patient and keep things the way they are. At least by the time I'm finished with this stupid fucking degree I'll still be debt free and I'll be able to go to any state or country and carve out a sensible life for myself.
I'm also thinking about buying Rosetta Stone for Mary and I to work on together. I'd be buying Spanish. Not much else to say. I just wish I was somewhere else in the world right now.
Current Music: Chopin 
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
00001_of_100000's Friends Page