on stuff.

Focusing on the process of moving is a nice distraction from the nauseating process of managing my federal student loans, because the university and the government feel that I must never forget that by the time I graduate in three more semesters I’ll have acquired enough debt to buy a house—a small house in a bad neighborhood, but that’s still a fucking house. I have a degree from a community college that I paid for out of pocket, and which got me out of two years of university requirements, and I honestly cannot even imagine what I’d be doing now if I’d had to do the entire four years at UA. I’d probably be curled up in a corner. Weeping.

So I’m focusing on packing, and packing up my life has brought to my attention the fact that, weirdly enough, I have surprisingly little to bring.

I’m bringing my guitars and my record collection, I’m borrowing the Wii and an Xbox 360, I have my clothes and a fist full of comic books and … I guess a toothbrush and some garbage bags. Shampoo. A box of dictionaries. Maybe some other books. I’m reaching, here. Everything else is school supplies because, as much as it pains me to admit, right now my life is my goddamn degree. Nothing else matters except eating and occasionally talking to people and sometimes personal entertainment. As my list o’ stuff pretty plainly demonstrates.

I move down on Friday, I think. Maybe Saturday. My father’s really dragging his feet on this because he thinks if he waits long enough he can combine “moving my things” with “visiting me for my birthday” and only drive to Tucson once.

This entry also doubles as an ad for my apartment complex. Look how swank it is.

on this blog.

So I’ve finally got a layout I can live with—the folks reading this on Facebook will have no idea what I’m talking about, but these notes are actually copies of the entries I’m writing here. Even though I’ve kept online journals for years it suddenly feels really strange to build a page that’s essentially dedicated to me, me, and me, with links which lead to more pages about myself, accounts I have on various sites, everywhere at once, sprawling all across the Internet in a vast web of self-obsession and egocentricity. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I guess no one has to read it all, except for maybe my mother.

But anyway, it’d be nice if I had something to write about that wasn’t essentially just me and the things I think about and the mild disasters which prove that my life is pretty average. My immediate family might care enough to read about my adventures in Tucson but I can’t imagine that having much of an appeal—I mean, I’m not sure how much I care, really.

Maybe I should stick to blogging about things that are ridiculous. Things that I see or hear that are ridiculous. Ridiculous things seem to happen all the damn time, but maybe life just seems ridiculous to me period.

on the Internet.

The Web 2.0 has given me a unique opportunity to bond with my mother, who’s been using AOL since the year it was invented but has been hesitant to get into anything more technologically advanced than those old school email loops they used in the nineties. I’m 23, so the Internet is practically a native language, and I had great success in teaching the woman how to use Facebook a few months back—she practically lives on the site now. I’m so encouraged that I’ve decided to teach my grandmother to use the site next.

I have a MacBook and a BlackBerry so I’m never away from the Internet. Ever. Between Google Mail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Latitude, I’m pretty sure Google could have me wiped off the map whenever they feel like it. Whether or not I should encourage this sort of technological dependency in others remains to be seen—but right now, my parents are pretty keen on the idea of tracking me wherever I go and being able to contact me at all times. This will be of some consolation when the Google Purge finally happens.

Supposedly all this modern interconnectivity is making us as a society more alone than ever. But I don’t know, man, I never feel alone.

on summer.

If I’d have known in the beginning that I’d spend almost my entire summer break unemployed, laid up sick in bed and surfing the Internet from my laptop, I’m not sure I would’ve gone through with it—not that I know of any alternative to living through the months of May, June, and July, but I definitely would’ve tried to think of one. The thing about taking a break from school is that when you get back summer seems like such a goddamn waste. I’m waiting to get back to work. The suspense is killing me. No, seriously. Right now I’d do anything to be about three weeks into the future, and we’re in the final stretch, here.

Of course, I’m also angling to jump all the work that’s coming up.

In the next three weeks I have to pack enough stuff to manage the next ten months; I have to pick a fight with my college, because I’ve learned that nothing gets done with the academic bureaucracy unless I make like I’m about to throw a hyperbolic, metaphorical punch; I’d like to find a job. Think I’ll be able to find a job? I doubt I’ll be able to find a job but I’m seeing a lot of weekends in my future, weekends spent dressing in nice shirts and filling out endless applications.

I have to physically move, which’ll be a pain and a half. I have to move to a city I absolutely hate, that’s worse.

What makes all this worth it? Oh, besides the fact that it’ll feel like someone finally hit PLAY on my life again, my studio apartment has all utilities included—which means, that’s right, free air conditioning, twenty-four hours a day, every day, year round. If you live in Arizona, you’ll understand. My parent’s house in Flagstaff doesn’t even have A/C.

The apartment’s got a pool, too.