Still Looking

Well fuck, I guess I’ll be surprised if anyone still checks this blog, but maybe that’s the point. I guess I’m realizing that despite early successes, I haven’t really found the people that I was hoping for here. I don’t notice it in the rush of things. I stay in the office late and come home in time to eat and crash. But now I’m on my spring break and the open time hasn’t quite filled out how I expected.

There’s a good night here and there, but always punctuated by two more spent pacing my apartment like a caged animal. I start to ponder if it’s worth a few hundred bucks and a parole violation to catch a quick flight home for a couple of nights. Most of the people I hang around with here aren’t much for night life, and the ones that are need some big production to make it worth their while. What the fuck ever happened to good company and few drinks?

Yeah, I’ve got good friends here. One crowd in particular that’s even good for sitting around the house with a case every now and then. But even with the right setting the content tends to be a bit off; all fantasy sports and bar sluts. I used to feel good about a night of fucking off, like I’d learned something about politics or art or people, some nugget of wisdom. I used to scoff at my gen-ed classes because I knew I could get a better primer over a bowl and a jug of wine just by raising the question. I’m not sure I’ve had a single non-academic conversation of true value since I’ve been here, the kind where I regard someone through half closed eyes and think ‘Thanks man, I had no idea.’

Fuck. It’s not all bad. My nine-to-five is everything I could possible hope for. I’m in an absolute hub of knowledge and I haven’t even come close coming down from that. But I’m figuring out that the flare was in the contrast all along, the big ‘fuck you’ from the unshaven fuck-up in the back row that just aced your test with hangover. That’s been my whole obsession with academics from the start. Its merit, not shirts and ties and obedience and haircuts your grandfather would approve of. Well it’s the same way here, I’m just not taking nearly enough advantage of it anymore.

I’m getting worried that I’m letting this work take so much of my life that when I decide to stop do something else for a while there won’t be anything there. I’m going months at a time now without ever talking to anybody back home. The fact of the matter is, most of the time I have nothing important to say, as much as I’d give to be sitting around your living room arguing about some completely inconsequential shit we’d find amusing.

On the bright side, I’m at the tail end of the major ‘paying you dues’ section of my PhD; shit will start looking up soon enough.