7:10 PM, Upon Caitlin's return home:
Caitlin (in the other room): Hey Dan, I think I'm going to cook dinner tonight. I put out some chicken.
Dan (pleasantly surprised): Oh? Awesome!
Caitlin: Yeah, I'm going to go do some 'shrooms. Should be pretty good.
Dan (confused): Wait... are you doing 'shrooms before or after you cook the chicken?
No response.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
What I've Learned
As my summer in South Orange wraps up in the next week (week and a half at most) and I return to Missouri for my 4 weeks of summer, I found it useful to record a few thoughts. In no particular order, and nothing terribly profound...
Over the last 10 weeks in South Orange:
Not a whole lot changed. I didn't meet a bunch of new people, I didn't go to Philly, or Boston, or DC, or New Hampshire, or... wherever. I generally kept to myself, went into the city a few times, read more books than normal, gained a lot of work experience, and had both an incredibly stressful and, at times, decently enjoyable time. Newark is pretty bad, but it's not terrible in certain parts in the day time. All that being said, I'm very glad it's coming to an end.
Over the last week:
I supposedly shouldn't be a lawyer. This is what 2 of the 3 lawyers in the practice have told me (and I haven't spoken to the third). When I get emails at 10:00 pm or later from them, despite I know they've been up since 7:00 (or earlier) getting ready for trial; when staying at work until midnight or one am on a weekend night is unusual, but not unheard of, I realize that maybe this isn't a profession I want to enter into (or, at least, to the extent that they have). Maybe I'm rediscovering my policy enjoyability, maybe I want to see my kids grow up, but, paradoxically, despite loving what I do at the law firm, my time at the law firm is convincing me I don't want to do "real lawyer" stuff for a living.
Over the last year:
Central had a pretty remarkable group of people. Seton Hall is okay, but I haven't met anybody of similar caliber to those people I knew back home. I don't know everybody as well, but no Nick Ramsey jumped out at me here. I'm not incredibly sure I've jumped out at anybody, really, but once again it's reiterated that we had a special group at high school. The people on the east coast are okay, but I don't know if I want to stay out here. Maybe Chicago could be a compromise between somewhere big and cool and the midwest.
Ramblings (Lessons?):
All in all, I recognize more how much each of us is changing. With one notable exception, I feel I talk to the people that read this less than I used to. We're each going out own separate ways, paths diverging, until eventually the vast majority of what we'll have left are memories. It's funny - in movies, and I think for most people in real life that don't chose to go hundreds of miles away to college, there isn't as much a break between high school and college. I'm not sure this will make sense, but stereotypically high school and summer ends, you go to college with a few friends, you're friends, gradually you're groups change, and eventually you may or may not become more separate from your friends from the past... but overall it's not so different a process from gaining and losing friends in a high school environment. Now I still count my five best friends as being from Missouri (yes, there's a ranking system), but (again, one exception) I feel we're not as good of friends as we were a year ago. This is nobody's fault, and shouldn't necessarily be mourned, but it's a sentiment that causes me to pause for reflection nonetheless. I assume I'll eventually have new best friends... or maybe that's grad school. Or maybe I'll marry somebody reading this in 6ish years (and yes, everybody I know of that has this address is female. Which is an entirely other blog post in and of itself...) and we'll have actually met our "soul mate" at age 14. As Chris Lang, who is still in a relationship with Angela Stone after a year at colleges in different states, put it (paraphrasing), "College isn't for relationships. It's more for fucking random people." I almost agree with him, at least insofar at what the system seems to promote. Maybe it's just kids our age. Adults. Whatever.
So, after that digression, what's left? Before all (or most) of us stop reading each others' blogs, or updating ever (I'm glaring at certain people. If you just felt a twinge of guilt, it's you.), or... basically before we all go our separate ways, I know this is something we all said at the end of high school, but thanks for the memories. Thanks for helping keep me somewhat sane during the first almost 12 months of my haphazard New Jersey adventure. Thanks for being there for me, even if there is a thousand miles away. When all we have left are memories, know that I cherish each and every one of them.
And to the one of you that I've stayed up all night with, talking incessantly about everything possible, and... well, you should know by now who you are. Especially, thanks to you too. And if this isn't you, don't feel bad. It's not like I like you any less than I did before. I kind of hate myself now, given that I'm being all sneaky and alluding to things in this blog post without saying who the heck I'm talking about. But I'm too lazy to restructure this entire post to avoid saying this, and don't want to delete it. ...Crap. Let's just move on. This wasn't the point of the post anyway. That was all that moving apart/learning/you're all so special to me. That was the point. Remember that part. And something about the East Coast. I think that it's okay, but not overwhelmingly great. That sounds good.
I feel like I have a few more things to say about relationships in general as we grow older, and the prospect of actually having something somewhat serious with somebody that we don't have to wait 3 years to actually materialize becomes, well, almost- sort of- close for me (end of college, maybe? During grad school?), but that's going to be another post. As you can probably tell by the poor grammar and syntax of this post, to say nothing of the post-time and the almost nonsensical punctuation, it's late, and I'm tired. So, once again, love you all.
Go to the link:
http://xkcd.com/610/
Over the last 10 weeks in South Orange:
Not a whole lot changed. I didn't meet a bunch of new people, I didn't go to Philly, or Boston, or DC, or New Hampshire, or... wherever. I generally kept to myself, went into the city a few times, read more books than normal, gained a lot of work experience, and had both an incredibly stressful and, at times, decently enjoyable time. Newark is pretty bad, but it's not terrible in certain parts in the day time. All that being said, I'm very glad it's coming to an end.
Over the last week:
I supposedly shouldn't be a lawyer. This is what 2 of the 3 lawyers in the practice have told me (and I haven't spoken to the third). When I get emails at 10:00 pm or later from them, despite I know they've been up since 7:00 (or earlier) getting ready for trial; when staying at work until midnight or one am on a weekend night is unusual, but not unheard of, I realize that maybe this isn't a profession I want to enter into (or, at least, to the extent that they have). Maybe I'm rediscovering my policy enjoyability, maybe I want to see my kids grow up, but, paradoxically, despite loving what I do at the law firm, my time at the law firm is convincing me I don't want to do "real lawyer" stuff for a living.
Over the last year:
Central had a pretty remarkable group of people. Seton Hall is okay, but I haven't met anybody of similar caliber to those people I knew back home. I don't know everybody as well, but no Nick Ramsey jumped out at me here. I'm not incredibly sure I've jumped out at anybody, really, but once again it's reiterated that we had a special group at high school. The people on the east coast are okay, but I don't know if I want to stay out here. Maybe Chicago could be a compromise between somewhere big and cool and the midwest.
Ramblings (Lessons?):
All in all, I recognize more how much each of us is changing. With one notable exception, I feel I talk to the people that read this less than I used to. We're each going out own separate ways, paths diverging, until eventually the vast majority of what we'll have left are memories. It's funny - in movies, and I think for most people in real life that don't chose to go hundreds of miles away to college, there isn't as much a break between high school and college. I'm not sure this will make sense, but stereotypically high school and summer ends, you go to college with a few friends, you're friends, gradually you're groups change, and eventually you may or may not become more separate from your friends from the past... but overall it's not so different a process from gaining and losing friends in a high school environment. Now I still count my five best friends as being from Missouri (yes, there's a ranking system), but (again, one exception) I feel we're not as good of friends as we were a year ago. This is nobody's fault, and shouldn't necessarily be mourned, but it's a sentiment that causes me to pause for reflection nonetheless. I assume I'll eventually have new best friends... or maybe that's grad school. Or maybe I'll marry somebody reading this in 6ish years (and yes, everybody I know of that has this address is female. Which is an entirely other blog post in and of itself...) and we'll have actually met our "soul mate" at age 14. As Chris Lang, who is still in a relationship with Angela Stone after a year at colleges in different states, put it (paraphrasing), "College isn't for relationships. It's more for fucking random people." I almost agree with him, at least insofar at what the system seems to promote. Maybe it's just kids our age. Adults. Whatever.
So, after that digression, what's left? Before all (or most) of us stop reading each others' blogs, or updating ever (I'm glaring at certain people. If you just felt a twinge of guilt, it's you.), or... basically before we all go our separate ways, I know this is something we all said at the end of high school, but thanks for the memories. Thanks for helping keep me somewhat sane during the first almost 12 months of my haphazard New Jersey adventure. Thanks for being there for me, even if there is a thousand miles away. When all we have left are memories, know that I cherish each and every one of them.
And to the one of you that I've stayed up all night with, talking incessantly about everything possible, and... well, you should know by now who you are. Especially, thanks to you too. And if this isn't you, don't feel bad. It's not like I like you any less than I did before. I kind of hate myself now, given that I'm being all sneaky and alluding to things in this blog post without saying who the heck I'm talking about. But I'm too lazy to restructure this entire post to avoid saying this, and don't want to delete it. ...Crap. Let's just move on. This wasn't the point of the post anyway. That was all that moving apart/learning/you're all so special to me. That was the point. Remember that part. And something about the East Coast. I think that it's okay, but not overwhelmingly great. That sounds good.
I feel like I have a few more things to say about relationships in general as we grow older, and the prospect of actually having something somewhat serious with somebody that we don't have to wait 3 years to actually materialize becomes, well, almost- sort of- close for me (end of college, maybe? During grad school?), but that's going to be another post. As you can probably tell by the poor grammar and syntax of this post, to say nothing of the post-time and the almost nonsensical punctuation, it's late, and I'm tired. So, once again, love you all.
Go to the link:
http://xkcd.com/610/
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Go
Work today was pretty boring. I wrote up some stuff, but generally had time to do a little browsing of the internet in ways that were only vaguely work related (looking at the political system of Namibia, for example - and by the way, it's pretty good). As I progressed through various websites, I actually got into certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs) set up in other countries, like one calling for human rights in Zimbabwe, for example. As I looked into opportunities for what these organizations did, or even just American partnerships with various organizations to teach English in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, etc., I was filled with this almost overpowering urge to just go to these places. Help out poor people, work for political activist groups, teach math to 7 year olds, somethings, anything, to go somewhere way, way out there for a while. For a time, a few minutes, everything seemed so perfectly crystal clear. I was gone. There was no question if, it was only when.
Then, of course, life intervenes. I came home from work, at some delivery chinese food, helped somebody move a TV around, went and hung out with some people and watched half of Casino Royal, got tired, came home... and here I am. Africa now seems worlds away.
I wonder how much our lives in the United States insulates us from that desire to make a difference in the world. I think a lot of people our age are looking for meaning in something (when they're not just angry they're bored), and a lot (to sound like your parents) chose really meaningless ways of blowing off steam just to... well... I don't know why, exactly. Because we can, I guess. From 3 weeks spent volunteering in poor, rural Nicaragua during high school, I have a very, very limited sense that there's a world out there that's not the United States; where everything isn't as good as we all have it here. Not to quote spider man or be narcissistic, but I've, at times, questioned why I was given this intelligence, drive, and other amiable qualities (like having a profound desire to do something worthwhile with my life) instead of the millions, if not billions, that live on less than $1.25 a day. Surely it's to make some sort of small difference, somehow. That desire to make a difference is, in some ways, one of my most profound hopes for my life.
So after this brief little bit of reflection, I haven't determined if I'm going to be in Africa, New Jersey, Missouri, or somewhere else next summer. I can honestly say I really don't know. We're all reaching the points in our lives where, soon, we'll have the chance to chose exactly how we spend our time, where we go, where we live, and what impact we make. In all seriousness, this is something that we should all consider with the greatest of importance. Before long, this is going to be our world, to make of it what we will. I don't know where I, or any of the rest of us, are going to end up, but I hope in some small way we find a way to matter. If any of you ever feel similarly moved to go run off somewhere, know that, again in all seriousness, I'd love to have you along. We should talk.
Then, of course, life intervenes. I came home from work, at some delivery chinese food, helped somebody move a TV around, went and hung out with some people and watched half of Casino Royal, got tired, came home... and here I am. Africa now seems worlds away.
I wonder how much our lives in the United States insulates us from that desire to make a difference in the world. I think a lot of people our age are looking for meaning in something (when they're not just angry they're bored), and a lot (to sound like your parents) chose really meaningless ways of blowing off steam just to... well... I don't know why, exactly. Because we can, I guess. From 3 weeks spent volunteering in poor, rural Nicaragua during high school, I have a very, very limited sense that there's a world out there that's not the United States; where everything isn't as good as we all have it here. Not to quote spider man or be narcissistic, but I've, at times, questioned why I was given this intelligence, drive, and other amiable qualities (like having a profound desire to do something worthwhile with my life) instead of the millions, if not billions, that live on less than $1.25 a day. Surely it's to make some sort of small difference, somehow. That desire to make a difference is, in some ways, one of my most profound hopes for my life.
So after this brief little bit of reflection, I haven't determined if I'm going to be in Africa, New Jersey, Missouri, or somewhere else next summer. I can honestly say I really don't know. We're all reaching the points in our lives where, soon, we'll have the chance to chose exactly how we spend our time, where we go, where we live, and what impact we make. In all seriousness, this is something that we should all consider with the greatest of importance. Before long, this is going to be our world, to make of it what we will. I don't know where I, or any of the rest of us, are going to end up, but I hope in some small way we find a way to matter. If any of you ever feel similarly moved to go run off somewhere, know that, again in all seriousness, I'd love to have you along. We should talk.
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