Aiming to Wish Middleness Goodbye.

“Hold on steady and strong, here’s the dawn coming on won’t be long. Then the sun will come shining through, to show me the place I once new. Fare thee well.” If you haven’t heard Kate Rusby’s “Fare Thee Well,” I suggest you get on that.

Is it wrong that the only thing bringing me solace right now is the fact that I will eventually find a job, and the class of 2009 will fill my shoes as the suburban loaf-about?

Today I had a snap back to reality. Perhaps it was that ER ended their ten-year run, and I remembered when it started, making me feel ridiculously old, or perhaps it was overhearing my oldest brother talk about how much he hates “Cubicle City.” Or further still, that my parents called my brother and I townies after we went to a local pub for some libations last night. In any case, I have lit yet another fire, hopefully this time the tiniest drop of naysayer won’t squash it out.

I don’t think I let myself realize it until lately, but since I’ve been home, I’ve become much more scared of my future than excited. That bothers me, and I’m glad to have realized it. Part of the reason, but not the entire reason, I’m scared is because I’ve become accustomed to living at home with Larry and Sheila (parents, and roommates extraordinaire). I’ve so easily fallen into the trap I accidentally set for myself by ever moving back to my hometown after interning on the other side of the country. And now I just need to make a break for it. I don’t know where that will lead me, but I know that no matter the amount of time I’ve been home, it’s too much.

As spring sprouts (though Chicago winter still has a stronghold here), I’ve given myself a self-imposed deadline. If I don’t have a full-time position in a month (a week and a half has already passed), then I’m either applying to graduate school, moving abroad to teach English as a second language, or just plain moving. I’ll keep you posted. So, “with this song, I’ll be gone. Fare thee well.”

They All Do It the Same

“All the little ants are marching. Red and black antennae waving. They all do it the same. They all do it the same way.” I always found these Dave Matthews Band lyrics hilarious. I’ve been to a concert of his in my day — and enjoyed the music, not so much the atmosphere. Watching frat boys and sorority girls dance up on each other, smoke a little cannabis and drink Millers until the day’s over and everyone’s got a sunburn. They sing the song, all doing it the same way. Irony.

So I never joined a sorority. Greek life just never got me. My parents wanted me to rush, so I did informal freshman year for about a week—two events, something meager. For a while after graduation I thought perhaps I’d made the wrong decision because I didn’t have a national network of older individuals to help me land a job.

But recent events, involving my twin younger brothers, who attend the University of Illinois, have brought me back down to reality. See, I’m not saying this is every person involved in the Kappa, Gamma, Sigma, Pi, Beta, Theta bullshit, but a large portion of Fraternity Brothers and Sorority Sisters really are terrible people. They’re people that want to blend in, be cool and have that network to fall back on when they need it. The thing is though, that network is pathetic. It’s made up of people without a backbone, so even if you have 120 Pi Phi blah blah blahs, together in a room, it’s like a plethora of Jello, easy to break through and slurp right up.

Out of the six kids my parents raised, only two of us pledged: My oldest brother at Indiana University and my youngest brother at Champaign-Urbana; my other two older siblings played sports in college, so had no time, and my other younger brother had no desire to pledge, but ended up pledging the same frat as his twin because of the huge Greek group at U of I. He’s since dropped out, and the other one is still in. It was easy for me to neglect life as a sorority lady at Iowa, as only about 11 percent of students are in the system. But even as my siblings find their way through college, looking for friends, looking for a place to belong, I’m reminded that a network of people is important. While Greek life might not have been my choice, I do understand the appeal. But then again, it’s just an appeal. The backstabbing thoughtlessness and unending drama of the immature “he said, she said” fraternity/sorority movement continues well past graduation. You’re brothers or sisters for life, right? Except not, because in the end they’re not your brothers, you aren’t sisters, you’re just people, people that know each other. And I wouldn’t count on those people being with you at the end of the day, helping you get a job, being there when you need a friend, or anything.

Middleness is… middling

Dear readers,

Forgive the sorry lack of updates. Seems as though, as will happen, people get too entrenched in the disatisfaction or, maybe, too busy with our time-killers to blog merrily about them. We’ve had a few writers drop out for strange and emotive reasons, and thus, regularity is in jepoardy.

But no worries! We’ll be back soon and re-tooled. If you wish to participate in the re-up, please please too. For now, it’s all in the game.

~Paul

Battle Royale: Swill v. Swell

A Chronicle of Alcohol Use and Abuse in the Post-Collegiate World

Beer, more than any other drink, is the drink of the little-d democrat. The choices are nearly limitless; indeed the beer drinker is truly only bound by the availability of certain brews. Price, unlike with bottles of wine or hard liquor, never strays all that far from ten greenbacks a sixer.
Yet, if beer is truly the drink of the common man, the worker, why such a heated debate surrounding its image? Why do we raise these qualitative qualms concerning our brews of choice? If your preference lies with a finely crafted, brown ale from the British Isles or with a robust lager from Milwaukee, what does it matter?
Swill: Because we’ve lost our way, that’s why! We’ve been perfectly happy for generations with Budweiser and Pabst, what has changed so drastically?
Swell: Because God damn it, pilsner is not everything! Standards must be made, and standards must be kept.
Swill: Beer has never been, nor will it ever be wine. It’s meant to refresh, to unwind after a long day, and not collect dust in some basement.

Recession-Proof: Part Two

 

A Chronicle of Alcohol Use and Abuse in the Post-Collegiate World

Only bulls can afford moralism.

But in this bear economy, we are taking the words of Malcolm X to heart. In a desperate search for any port in a storm, many state legislatures are considering lifting their arcane Blue Laws—which not only restrict the sale of alcohol on Sundays, but until recently in many states, cars.

It’s no secret that Americans drink. It’s also not lost on anyone that in times of crisis we drink more. And what spells crisis better than The Great Recession?

Imagination and Its Discontents

One of the great differences between humankind and other living things is our ability, individual and collective, to imagine the future. We are the only species able to envision where we want to go, what kind of shape we want our lives to trace. This ability, like so many of the characteristics that make humanity unique, is a bit of a catch-22. Though we are capable of imagining what is not the case, we are also capable of imagining what cannot be the case, ever. And of course, God rarely grants us the ability to tell the difference.

To me, it seems a subtle curse that humankind will always be driven and frustrated by dreams of great things that can never be, dreams that are not revealed as false until it is too late. I think the average Middler is particularly susceptible to these kinds of painful disappointments. Unlike the animals, our mental energies are not limited to certain ravenous physical urges (food, sex, etc.). Rather, we seek subtler, long-lasting satisfactions, the kinds that come through personal fulfillment, love, prestige, etc..

Because we combine an ignorance of real world barriers with the vitality of youth and a college-education (with some of us even still possessing a modicum of beauty), we are tantalized by visions that confuse the impossible for the possible. Being thus deluded, we embark upon a host of ill-conceived endeavors. It is only later we realize that our young, powerful imaginations—that years ago sent us on many a fool’s errand—were operating without the benefit of experience or reality. Our journeys through the world of imagination (“I’m going to be a great doctor/writer/person/etc.”) did not take into account the world itself.

Mushiness

“It may be years until the day my dreams will match up with my pay.”  — Feist, Mushaboom

I need to exercise my brain, because let’s face it, it could be a while before I have a real schedule for myself. I spent a week in Florida visiting my grandparents and trying to run away from the sun in fear of a sunburn. I read four of Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic novels. Quick reads. But I can’t keep doing this to myself. I can’t keep feeling content with not having a to-do list, with the major chore of the day being getting up, as the words “just be productive” merry-go-round in my mind.

So I’ve quieted my addiction to Rebecca Bloomwood’s spending habits, and I am opting for a more intense read. I feel as if I haven’t been using my brain. Like I haven’t been engaged. I suppose this is what happens after college, but pre-40-hours-per-week jobs. Mushiness. My interviews in New York were so refreshing. It was like I was coming up for fresh air. But still no definites. I figure to make this fresh air feeling linger longer I have to try to make myself be engaged in something on a regular basis. I need to make a schedule, so I don’t fall into this mushy pattern.

This is where I’m at now: Reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, learning the banjo, and setting up more interviews that will determine my next steps.

Controlling the Remote Channels of Middleness

Since graduating from college, I have spent a great deal of time watching television–and since I cannot afford any of the good channels–watching television on my laptop. I’m also still pretty confused about the whole switchover from analog to digital, so I’m playing it safe.

I am one of those Middlers who just had to get out of the Midwest the moment after taking her last final exam. So I moved to NYC to join the internship parade. Making next to no money, and then losing my health insurance in the fall, I have grown ever more mindful of my own physiological frailty. Friends want to know, would I like to go hiking? Skating? Skiing? Yes, yes and yes, but can you wait 6 months to a year? I should have healthcare by then. Unfortunately, even my overly cautious lifestyle cannot ward off my triannual sinus infections–it seems like every time the wind changes, the DOW drops and my immune system goes with it. Needless to say, I’ve been lying a little low lately.

This in mind, I believe the most accurate way to illustrate my middleness experience is to list the television series (both classic and new) that I have either watched or re-watched during the past year. These are the shows I have streamed, encouraged to buffer, and subsequently screened on my overheated laptop, often while consuming a now familiar dish—a little something I like to call My One Roommate’s Eggs Scrambled Over My Other Roommate’s Hot Sauce:

May: The Mary Tyler Moore Show

June: The Office (UK)

July: Perfect Strangers

August: The Kids in the Hall

September: Curb Your Enthusiasm

October: Doctor Who

November: Keeping Up Appearances

December: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

January: Northern Exposure

February: Arrested Development

March: Taxi

While there is a nice arc, I wish there were a more diagnosable pattern to be found here: Optimism to realism? Upward mobility to public transportation? I suppose my viewing choices indicate nothing profound about my current transitional state—whatever television programs I’ve been watching are simply stand-ins until The Wonder Years comes out on DVD anyway. For the moment, though, I find myself appropriately devoted to LOST. And there is absolutely nothing middling about that.

Stages of Middleness: #1 — Graduation

The long and winding road that leads... to other long and winding roads

This is the gateway, the essential hazing brought upon God’s fratboys to welcome us into Middleness: Graduation. The voices you read on this site won’t hit all of these stages except this one. We all (literally or figuratively) donned that cap and launched into so-called “real life.” Lacking an undergraduate seminar on what exactly reality was supposed to bring, we were ultimately directionless — even if we tricked ourselves into “totally knowing” what we want to do.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This post focuses on the intense push and pull of the want to escape and the overwhelming truth that, well, we still have a lot of work to do. I had a friend tell me recently that she was going to stop hanging out with me if I asked what she was doing after graduation again — but I’m just following what was implanted upon me. That question is an adult haunt since at least junior year, if not from the day high school was declared done.

And certainly it’s been on my mind for years. I happily graduated at the edge of the top 1/3 of my high school class, yet made enough odd alliances to be selected to give the graduation speech. As self-indulgent as quoting your old self may be, I think my sentiments there might have preemptively doomed me to Middleness:

“All the preparation for this ceremony is valid because this is what most view as the point of high school. We were to live our grade school lives in order to pass high school, in order to get accepted into a good college. All our classes and grades and experiences were supposedly used specifically in preparation for this ceremony, this diploma. And from here, we will enter college or business training, meant to prepare us for a job. Then, at our jobs we are supposed to gain money to prepare us for retirement.”

Recession-Proof

A Chronicle of Alcohol Use and Abuse in the Post-Collegiate World

The barrage of media coverage had to harsh our buzz at some point.  How could we maintain any kind of high while being inundated with all this “shovel-ready” talk and discussion of astronomically depressing job losses?  And even more disconcerting to those of us looking at the job market for the first time: the almost complete lack of new jobs. What the hell happened to all those baby-boomers who were supposed to retire?

But maybe most depressing of all is gradual waning of one of the last strongholds of physical human socialization: the bar.  We’ve sat around for years and listened to the movie industry bemoan the continually more introverted habits of film-goers (Netflix, anyone?).  Then the internet and its lack of any actual contact or real human interface.  The list goes on.  We have a larger network of people, but we have fewer and fewer close confidants.