For the past week I've either been too busy to write in this thing or, when I've had free time, found that I had nothing to say. When I get home from work and make and eat dinner, it's already seven o'clock, and the four or five hours I usually spend reading/thinking/bike riding have been occupied by Northwestern job applications and trying to get my apartment situation figured out. (The apartment situation is this: Jeff, Jason's younger brother, agreed to pay a big chunk of our rent so that we could live in this nice ass apartment and then bailed on us after three months. Jason and I cannot afford $1500/month between the two of us and we don't know anyone who is willing to join us and pay $500/month with no utilities. So while searching for a party to take over our lease, we're also searching for a new, cheaper place to live, and we'd like to have all of this settled before the end of the month.) This is why I've been reading Foucault's "History of Sexuality" for, like, a month. That, and my magazine subscriptions have started to roll in, which takes up a lot of my train reading.
I just feel tired all the time lately. Some nights I'll get 4 hours of sweaty sleep and some nights I'll get nine hours of dead sleep, but either way I never feel rested, and I feel like I spent my entire day doing what's necessary (work, eat, job applications, apartment stuff) instead of what I want to do (read, write, think, watch The Wire, go on a bike ride, cut shit out of the paper). With the exception of a couple of apartment showings this weekend, signing for a new apartment tomorrow night, and my morning/afternoon of job applying, THIS WEEKEND IS MINE. Eight uninterrupted hours should be enough to liberate me.
This past weekend Drew, Mauriah and Jonah came to visit. It was awesome. We did a lot of stuff in two days -- Shedd Aquarium, Chicago Institute of Art, and the Lincoln Park Zoo -- and met up with Sam Newman and Dylan Simons at the CIA. It was nice to see so many familiar faces. It was nice to see Drew, Mauriah and Jonah. Since moving, I've come to understand exactly how special Drew Rhodes is. We both love basketball a lot, we both love hip hop a lot (I think our musical tastes diverge a little after that), we both have a very cynical, pessimistic sense of humor, and we share a decent amount of skeptical political angst. I often miss him. And it was nice to see Mauriah too. There's a decent chance she's reading this, so I'm going to stop talking about her like she's not here. Mauriah, your visit was wonderful. I feel bad about not taking the time to get to know you while you were so close, and I enjoyed getting to know you a little better while you were here. Remember on Saturday night when Jason and I came back and you and Drew were drinking? That may have been my favorite moment of the weekend. Even though Drew bought those Bailey's things, I guess I just didn't expect it. But when I came back, you were both really
giddy-happy, and, you especially, it seemed like your eyes were lit up, or maybe just open more or something. In short, I wanna sit down and chat and giggle at
The Soup with you.
And it was great to see Jonah. Half of his life had passed by since the last time I saw him. He's got more hair, he's bigger, he's making a lot more noise, and he's still the happiest, most easygoing baby in the history of babies.
Just remembered! A thing I have been thinking about a lot in the last week -- I need to be more critically positive! I realized that I spend way too much time thinking about the flaws of things, why they suck, and, in my quest for purity, why just a little bit of suckiness ruins the whole thing. This is stupid and I know it, but this is going to be a difficult habit to break because I've been doing this my whole fucking life. My mom taught me to argue, and she taught me that instead of forming substantive arguments as to why something is good or why it should be done, it's much easier to form critical arguments on why the other thing sucks or shouldn't be done. I definitely took this with me into my academics (fuck psychology, I want to rip shit apart in English course essays!). That's not to say that I don't find negative or deconstructive criticism helpful or necessary at times, but I think I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking in that mode compared to the amount of time I spend trying to build something up. Ask me to tell you why something is bullshit and I'll give your a grocery list for a family of six. Ask me why something is good, or why I like something, and chances are I will be much less articulate, have many less reasons/support, and that I'll end up either telling it's better because it's not that other sucky thing (which is where I will shift to indignant criticism of the other sucky thing) or that I just like it -- just because. For example, Graham and I were talking about this Monday night. We could both give you a long list of reasons why you should not vote for McCain, but (and maybe I'm speaking more for myself here) a lot of my support for Obama, especially since he's began to shift to the middle, is essentially based on the argument that he's better than McCain. And while I think that's true and important, I also think it's steeped in a good bit of compromise and looking the other way, although, with the middle-shifting (drilling, FISA, Faith-based initiatives, etc.) I can't help but cringe and wonder
where all of my enthusiasm (and hope -- hope, Barack) has gone.Politics aside, this mindset has been a problem with my recent struggles since moving to Chicago. In trying to figure myself out, I've often done so by defining myself by what I'm not, or what I don't like, instead of by what I am, or what I do like. I suppose either one is a little tricky, and that framing identity with an "I am this, I am that" (pointing) procedure is also problematic. In turn, I've realized that my initial goal of becoming a genderqueer male-ish person was near-sighted and haste, and not that different from my previous attempts to be a "straight dude." This doesn't mean that I'm not messing with gender any more, and this doesn't mean that I've come to some kind of "just be me" resolution. It means that I'm changing my goal here from transforming myself into some predetermined identity with defined borders and all that, to continuing to find out exactly who I am regardless of gender, or despite gender, and to do so by fucking with gender. I suppose the ultimate goal (maybe setting "ultimate goals" is my problem) is to take gender into consideration to the point that I fully realize how arbitrary it can be.
Whew. When I started this post, I thought I'd be ending it by saying "well, at least I wrote something." But that felt productive!
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brendawgiswhat's journal
