Blogging

I suppose it's early in the life of this blog to start writing about writing, but it's the subject on my mind right now.  I can't put a finger on why blogging as I graduate college seems so much less respectable than blogging did in high school.  I suppose that feeling a need to express yourself is sort of juvenile in itself.  But I don't think that's it.

Last night, after our last day of classes, there was a cheesy Senior Dinner in a tent on the southeast lawn, complete with a wine selection and nightclub lighting.  One nasal-voiced speaker after another took the microphone while I dismantled my free Class of 2011 picture frame and thought about jobs and apartments and breakups and Spanish and sex.  I spent most of the night people-watching and making slightly embittered remarks to Juan, who was sitting next to me.

"That girl was my neighbor freshman year," I shouted over the din, nodding as subtly as I could.  "I remember helping her move in."
"She's pretty.  I don't like her dress."  He was scanning the crowd even as he spoke.
"Yeah, it's not my thing.  She's always been really girly.  It's a trip to see her here, though.  I remember the first time I shook her hand."  I was talking more to myself than to him, and he knew it, but he knew better than to stop me.  Instead he said detachedly, "It really doesn't feel like four years."
"No," I agreed.
"I mean, I don't feel any different," he continued.  "Just older.  Do you?"
I thought about it.  "I just feel less precocious," I said.

Juan laughed in his good-natured way and I felt a rush of affection for him and for Joey, Anna, and Ruben, who were sitting on his other side.  They all looked happy and animated; Anna was laughing, cushioned in a giant purple tulle dress, and Ruben, crisp in his camel hair blazer, was gesturing expectantly towards a plate of butter, his eyes already eating.  Joey looked like a banker in a crisp blue shirt, but he was making an obscene gesture with one hand and grinning gleefully, looking innocent and mischievous all at once, like a lovable kid.   The alcohol was starting to hit me and at that moment, I just felt happy, and free, and grateful for the opportunity to be with them, and willing to forget about the future for a night.

I didn't think much about it then, but in retrospect, I do think the idea of precocity is part of what makes things so different now from before college.  Back in high school, I think I felt that because we were young, just attempting to write, just showing that you cared about things outside of yourself, was admirable.  Being "good" mattered, but being bad wasn't too embarrassing.  We had time to kill, after all; we were all just waiting, itching, to graduate and do all the things we'd been dreaming of — learn to drive, see the world, have casual sex, buy fake IDs and go to hip bars, seduce teachers, stay out as late as we wanted... being cool was a goal in itself, and you didn't have to justify your use of time if you made your own clothes or learned Dylan songs on the guitar.

You really see the difference in social attitudes when you think about bands.  High school bands are always sort of cool, even though they usually suck, because at least those kids are trying to accomplish something, to make something bigger than themselves.  There's not much to lose by starting a band in high school — as a former self-conscious and musically untalented teen, I can attest to that firsthand: there wasn't much risk.  As long as you knew a few chords it was all okay.  But the older you get, the more you feel like if you're going to be in a band, it has to be amazing, and you have to be good enough to make a career out of it — because otherwise you can't really justify the use of your time.  Your vocation, and how you spend your time, is who you are, and if you're not exceptional at it, you're not exceptional as a person.  So it's better not to spend too much time on things if you're not already good at them.  Your major in college, the parties you go to, the places you live, the articles you write — if they're not all aligned with your career goals, you feel like you're wasting your time.  And wasting time means wasting opportunities, which means that you yourself are directly responsible for everything you've failed to become.  And failure is the cardinal sin, at least in New York.  So "doing everything you can" starts to feel like a moral imperative.  The critics aren't just in our heads, either: in my experience, women don't want to date guys who waste time, and men don't respect women who have too many "hobbies."  Only people who've had their jobs for a decade, have spouses or partners, own their apartments, and are thinking about retirement can really justify wasting time — and even then, it's looked at as a sad state of affairs, "settled" and domestic and limited, unaspirational.  You can't just read books; you have to be on the path to becoming a writer.  You can't just like music; you have to be an expert at least, if not a musician.

"You can't just be any more," Ruben complained to me on Saturday, as I unburdened myself of my problems while he helped me jump a fence in Dumbo to soak in the sun by the mouth of the bridge.  We'd tried to go to a sample sale in Carol Gardens, but had found it overpriced and overcrowded and had decided to take a walk instead.  "A lot of the people I met in Mexico City were happy to just work at American Apparel and make rent and have parties together in the summer.  They didn't see a retail job as a dead end; they just saw it as an easy way of supporting themselves.  My landlords, for instance, just rented out apartments for a living, and spent the rest of their time doing drugs.  Obviously there are health risks to that lifestyle... but otherwise, I sort of respect it.  I've been worrying about what comes next my whole life.  I want to know when that ends."

"I know what you mean," I said.  "Our cultural mindset is really 'more and more and more,' and if you think about it, that can only lead to perpetual dissatisfaction."  The sun was warm and inviting and seemed to be tempting me to listen to him, to enjoy the present and disregard the future and the past as much as possible.  But even as the breeze teased my skirt and the sun grazed my cheeks, I found myself unable to give in somehow — to the sun, to Ruben's argument, to the bliss of forgetting about lovers and money and jobs.  Because even though I find the mentality of achievement somewhat oppressive, I also believe in it, to an extent.  Maybe I've lived in this city (and had these parents) for too long.  I believe in meritocracy, in being good, in objective value.  I believe that there are things that are more important than being happy.  And I hate the idea of wasting time.

As a result, my way of engaging with the arts and with the things that interest me has always been to see them as part of my formation as an intellectual, part of my education — ultimately, I suppose, efforts towards the acquisition of some sort of career, vaguely conceived as the sort of thing that would be characterized by phrases like "seminal work" and "public intellectual."  But now that I stand poised to actually acquire a real, and decidedly less glamorous, career — if I'm lucky — it's frightening to realize that when that happens, I won't be able to justify the pursuit of my own interests as in the name of ambition.  I'll have to accept that I'm doing things like reading and blogging and learning the Accordion (yeah shut up) for myself alone, things that won't add up to anything "tangible" "at the end of the day."  And I don't know if I'm ready.  How do you stay inspired when you already know, more or less, what your future will look like?