What's in a Decade?

First of all, I'm listening to the new Death Cab single. I didn't even know that they had a new single until my friend sent me a link to the video. I'm out of the loop. The cover art for the single and the upcoming album looks amazing. I kind of want to buy a poster version of the cover art and frame it and put it in my new apartment. My new apartment which doesn't yet exist.

My life is completely hypothetical starting a month from now. I cannot really get over that. I am interviewing for internships even though I need to find a paid job, just because it's terrifying to think that I might have no prospects on the morning after I graduate. I know I keep harping on this and some day I will look back and say, "Why did I worry so much?" and tell college seniors to just go with the flow. I know because I always look back and wonder why I worried so much. But then I think that maybe if I hadn't worried, things might not have turned out the same. Hmm.

Anyway, due to my worrying, my heavy book tote, and the fact that I usually write on my laptop while propped on my elbows in bed (today I'm sitting up), my whole body feels achy and wanky. My neck is a particular trouble area. I know basically zero about muscles (film and writing major here) and the art of massage, but last night two of my friends felt my neck and went, "Whoa! This is not good." Of course my neck is strained; it's holding up my GIANT BRAIN. Just kidding. Although if thoughts and worries had weight to them, my head would probably have toppled off of my neck long ago. But yeah, if I touch my neck it hurts. Sometimes too much to sleep. If I'm stressed now and things aren't even THAT stressfull, I probably have this to look forward to for the rest of my life. GREAT. I mean, I realize that I'm particularly stressed right now, but you know what else is stressful? HAVING a job. Growing up. Kids. Oh God.

A couple of days ago at the sound department, one of my 22-year-old co-workers (male) mentioned that he would like to be a father when he's 27. Another female co-worker and I pointed out that if that's what he wants, he should really be married within the next three years. So he should really meet his wife ASAP. No pressure. This guy just recently quit smoking, and he admitted (maybe jokingly) that it's partially about finding a girl (kudos to him either way). But anyway, the point is that these timelines are starting to form. (As a side note, though, as a guy it's easy for my friend to say he wants to have kids sooner than me and the other girls, because once he has kids he doesn't have to be the mom. The stakes are different.)

Yesterday I was thinking about the word "decade." It's such a small easy way of saying TEN YEARS, but the funny thing about decade is that sometimes it's used to denote a long stretch of time, and sometimes it's meant to compress time. I could say, "Decades ago women wore corsets," and that's kind of neutral. But if I went to an interview and they said, "We'll call you sometime in the next decade," that would seem ludicrous. Or when I talk to people and realize that it could take a decade to reach my career goals, that seems like forever, even though I'll only be in my early 30s in a decade (only, ha). But then when I think that within a decade I will probably be married and have two kids, it feels like, "Oh my God, a decade is too short! It's just around the corner." Sort of.

Don't get me wrong--I am looking forward to this next step. It's just a scary, strange transition involving so many decisions. That's why I'm kind of obsessing over it. Eventually I'll write another post about something more fun than my neuroses. Hopefully.

Celeberate!

The other day I was typing an email at my internship, and I accidentally wrote that we were going to "celeberate Mother's Day!" Freudian slip?

Everybody who knows me fairly well knows that my personality is a weird mix of childlike joy about the world and extreme cynicism, and I feel like celeberating is a good description of the way I often speak about certain topics. When I think about it, I'm kind of surprised that the word "celeberate" doesn't already exist. I just submitted it to Urban Dictionary, and if all goes well it will be as popular as "frenemy" in the near future (what I really need to do is use it in a screenplay and then get that screenplay produced).

One entity which I find myself simultaneously celebrating and berating all the time is the United States of America. Lately my poor roommate has been subjected to hearing me ask a slew of rhetorical questions beginning with, "How can we reconcile...?" The "we" is almost always non-white people, and when I say non-white I basically mean everybody who didn't come here on the Mayflower or from an affluent Western European country. Because when you think about it, Irish people and Jews are techincally Caucasian but we got a lot of shit (and in some cases, still do) from America when we first got here. Occasionally I am enthused about America, but more often than not I want to talk smack. Even when I'm saying good things about America, I'm usually not 100% pleased. For example, "The great thing about America is that everybody's free to pursue their dreams...in theory." That's celeberating the USA!

Other things that I love to celeberate: religion, the film industry, USC, my friends and family. Sorry losers! You know I love you. And you know I celeberate myself all the time.

Another "institution" which I can't help but celeberate--because I really am not sure how to feel-- is the male/female practice of courting/relationships. Sometimes I think, "Oh, I can't wait to have a special man to share my whole life with!" and other times I think, "Someday soon I'm going to get married and spend the rest of my life compromising my goals and dreams and being stuck in one place (unless we're rich and can afford multiple homes)." Last night I was having this very discussion with my friend Brennero, and he was jokingly referring to having kids as "popping out some anchors." Every year all of this "some day I'll be an adult with a 'real life'" stuff is getting closer and closer, and the prospect of jumping into that life is half wonderful, half horrifying. Suddenly a lot of people I know are engaged or married, and I'm thinking, "Whoa, whoa!" (that makes me think of horses). Right now it's scary enough going forward into life as an independent person (as opposed to being a dependent--I am really going to miss being on my parents' insurance policies).

My whole life right now feels overshadowed by the fact that a little over a month from now I will graduate from college. That means that I will lose my housing and my university job, my friend-base will scatter, and I ought to have lots of creative work ready to show to people. Luckily almost all of my film friends are in the same boat of not having a job lined up (film jobs usually need to be filled immediately, so we can't really get them until classes end). As much as I'm excited to go out into the world (and getting kind of jaded about university life), I feel like my identity is being stolen. I'm going to miss being able to go to cheap arts events on campus, walking past the music school and hearing opera singing echo mysteriously around me, running into friends everywhere, always being able to stop by the sound department and see a friendly face, etc.

Oh well. People graduate from college every year, and most of them turn out okay.

Let's have a celeberation!