Well, now that the inherent boredom of summer has lost its novelty and become, well...boring, I thought I'd create something that'll help me use my time more productively than Minesweeper or Facebook. I like to think I'm a fairly decent writer, but my output as of late has been limited to research papers, essays, and the like. Thought this might help change that.
I had a Xanga back in high school (that makes me sound older than I really am), and it was a disaster. I'm realizing in hindsight that the majority of my social problems during junior and senior year were directly related to things I posted up there. It was too personal, way too personal - I said exactly what I was thinking, I named names, I passed judgments, and worst of all, I was blissfully ignorant about doing it. I wasn't treating it like a publicly-advertised online journal, which is what it was; I was treating it like a diary that most people wouldn't let anyone read in a million years. I should start this one off, then, by promising that my entries aren't going to consist of "Today I did this, this, this, and this" or "I've been feeling lost and alone lately, why won't anyone call me?" I'm not quite that emo anymore.
Instead, I'm hoping that most of my topics will be relatively abstract. I'm kind of a quiet guy, a lot of times I just sit and think. I notice things about society, about people around me, about life in general. Some of them I flog around and then dismiss, but occasionally, I get this idea that deserves more than that. I usually scribble down a rough outline on a post-it or in the back of a class notebook, figuring I'll come back to it later. You wouldn't believe how many crumpled up pieces of paper I came across when I was moving out of my dorm room a couple weeks ago. I'm not saying the ideas I come up with are earthshattering or even particularly interesting, but if you didn't want to read them, you wouldn't have come to this website in the first place.
I really want to go on a road trip. I almost did last summer, with some friends from the summer camp that I used to work at, but my parents nipped that in the bud pretty quick. After about a week of pleading, they allowed me to fly out of Dallas, meet my friends in Arizona, stay for two nights, and then fly back home. I tried to argue that flying defeats the entire point of a road trip, but they just told me not to push my luck. I've been reading a lot of travelling novels lately, everything from Kerouac's On the Road to Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, and I get more and more pumped after every one I finish. It wouldn't be about the people I went with - hopefully, it'll be about the people I meet along the way. I want to stop at a mom-and-pop's diner in Shithole, Texas and make small talk with the waitress. I want to pull into a gas station at 5 a.m. after a full night of driving, buy a cup of crappy coffee and maybe a donut, and keep going. I want to hit 100 mph on deserted highways that continue on as far as I can see with trees and bushes being the only scenery on both sides. I don't care where I go; in fact, I don't really want to know. It'd be cool to head west, I want to see the ocean. I haven't seen the ocean in a long time. But, if I see a sign that says "Springfield 24," for example, I want to think, "That sounds like as good a place as any to spend the night" instead of, "Crap, I'm an hour behind schedule."
At home, I have relatively little responsibilities, but no freedom. At college, I have almost unlimited freedom, but lots of responsibilities to bog it down. On a road trip like that, though, even if only for that week, or two weeks, or whatever, it seems like I'd have complete freedom with zero responsibility. Everyone's dream, am I right?
Well, that's it for the night. I need to start jobhunting tomorrow. I thought I'd found a great job, but turns out that it's gonna be an unpaid internship. I'm still gonna do it because it sounds interesting, but I guess I should find something that pads my bank account a little bit, too. Take it easy, everybody.
