8:51am
Bumped into a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen for awhile and it was really nice to actually catch up with him. We discussed a few things and now I am all riled up because it touches on what has been going through my head basically non stop for several weeks now.
Hard to figure out where to begin, other than I am constantly reminded of where I am in my life, where others are in their lives, where I want to go in this life, and the varying distances between all three. This is not about discontent regarding these distances, more just observations.
Some examples:
- I despise MySpace. I really, really despise it and I am not sure why. I have a friendster account. An Orkut account. A tribes account. 43things. That other job one--LinkedIn. Monster. Heck, I even have a myspace account that yes, I really did sign up for before I knew anything about it and even if you went to find it, you would find nothing in it. The account I deal with most is flickr, because I like photos, I like seeing what my friends are taking pictures of, and I like posting the photos I take for others to see.
But for some reason, MySpace, well, bugs. I know I have talked about this before, but for some reason, especially after the Murdoch purchase and after seeing so many people go on it. I dunno why I get so grumpy about it. Maybe I feel left out? No, that can’t be it. I literally don’t have the chemicals in me to make my brain care less about it. Maybe it’s because I already spend so much time on the computer...maybe it would be different if I were 24 and single.
That’s probably what it is.
So, okay, I am not the target demographic. Moving on.
Like, well...like at least a few of my friends, I am not expecting, nor do I actually have, a kid. When you boil it down even further, of the married couples I do know, I am one of a seemingly rapidly decreasing number that are not expecting or already waking up early to take care of their new baby. What’s really interesting, personally, is that when my parents had me, they were apparently one of the first of their group of friends to have a kid and now it looks like Whit and I will be one of the last. It’s just a strange time, when you see everyone moving to the “next” phase and you don’t find yourself bouncing up and down all excited to go there with them. One is tempted to look inward and figure out the root causes of this inaction, but then, who cares, really? It’s just really interesting; the majority of the people that talk to Whit and me about kids urge us to wait, to travel, to enjoy our lives, that we still have “time.” It’s like having kids is jail. Purgatory. A holding cell with a sentence of 18 years before you can get your freedom back. The other half are talk about how wonderful it is to have a new best friend, to watch the world with different eyes, to interact with life so incredibly differently.
It is strange, to watch the social balance change. Those with babies and those without babies. It’s the new Married vs. Single. It’s a riff on the “in” and the “out”. So, for someone who spent a good deal of his life ridding himself of valuing being part of the “in” crowd, I find myself resentful of this new social delineation, because, let’s be honest, I had no hand in managing the creation of it.
And I thought my 20s would be the decade of navel gazing. Now I am just gazing at new mothers, transfixed at how adult everyone else seems to be and realizing that I still don’t really get it and too busy, to uninterested to overthink it. I would rather work on the story I am writing, both figuratively and literally. Selfish? Nah. I’m married to a force of supernature and we’ll rock the multiverse however we want. We’ll own the transitions on our own time. For whatever reason, neither of us grew up with “having a family” being the main goal in our lives. My main goal was meeting the person who turned out to be Whit and living a crazily creative life, doing what I could to squeeze everything I could out of experience and contributing mightily. I am looking forward to this person that is part me and part Whit--we both seem to be running late for our meeting, is all.
Ah, morning writing.
I am writing a script, by the way--an outline right now--and so far, I really like it. I spent part of Sunday writing and it was really nice.
Went to a cool DJ/Art/NASA thing at the LA Arboretum Sunday night. Whit did her thing in the Spitzer booth, I did my head nodding to computer music. It was fun. Another nice LA event, another arrow in my “LA Defense” quiver for when I go to SF and NY!
Have a good ‘un...
Tuesday, August 1, 2006