I Can’t Sleep
I can’t sleep because it’s hot and I have to decide between two very good jobs. I’m not looking for sympathy and in all likeliness am now stoking in someone an ember of super-heated contempt, but for now, right now, I can’t sleep because I have to decide between two very good jobs.
We all have existential woes: What is it all for? What does it all mean? During different stages of our lives we apply these questions to different things. My friend was telling me about a younger woman he’s dating. Recently graduated from college, she applies these questions to the issue of identity. Who am I? Who are my friends? Where do I fit in? My sense of self, while far from being set in stone, is fairly established. I am what I am and what I don’t understand about myself is rarely the cause of a sleepless night.
Last spring, I had a student in my class (a freshman) ask me what I wanted to be when I graduated. I laughed. It seemed a ludicrous question. I told her I didn’t want or need to be anything; that I was a fully realized human who already was someone or something. After all, I was well traveled, had a mortgage, 401k plans, good friends, clean-pressed shirts and the love a good woman. But here now, right now, that question doesn’t seem so silly anymore as it lies at the heart of my job related indecision. What is it all for? What does it all mean?
The Thing About Moving
The thing about moving is that it’s terrible. Worst. Thing. Ever.
On the subject, I’m moved to histrionics. I believe that there’s a ring of hell where people do nothing but move. An update on the Sisyphusian Myth where people pack, move and then unpack, only to pack move and then unpack again, day after day for the rest of their unnatural lives.
More than the physical pain is the mental trauma of decision-making. What to throw out, what to keep and where to put it.
But then it’s done – the pain dulled and forgotten until the next move. Naturally, having reached the age where your body can no longer handle a move to a three-story walkup and it has become inappropriate to ask friends to help, we hired movers. We’re still unpacking now, but all of our stuff is here and more or less in one piece. The plastering, sanding and painting are done and most things are finding their place in our new/old apartment. The five-point buck looks regal hanging above the television. The art that I’ve acquired while at school, a couple mine, but most traded from colleagues and professors, hung 58” up to center will remind me of what I’ve been doing the past two years and what I hope to do in the time to come.