Bedding

A few days ago I surveyed the items on display in my apartment and realized a good 75% of what I own qualifies as college leftovers. This is all well and good, except I'm nearly a 25-year-old gay man living in San Francisco, and my taste should have evolved since I lunged for the least expensive, pseudo-classy duvet cover I could find at Bed, Bath, and Beyond six years ago. The problem with upgrading, though, is that once one thing is replaced, the rest has to follow. And preferably sooner than later. How many more times is this going to happen? If I buy a new lamp and bedside rug now, will I be keeping them both another six years? What am I going to favor at 31? I'm reminded of that scene from Fight Club where Edward Norton is doing a voiceover and mentions that he flips through IKEA magazines looking for the perfect couch that will both define his personality and last forever. "That's it. That's the last sofa I'm gonna need." Should I be perturbed that certain elements of my life are beginning to mirror the depressing underbelly of Fight Club? I'm voting yes.

Quarter-life Crisis

Last night I had a friend over. He walked in on me aggressively cleaning my b**g, which has more or less sat in a corner collecting dust for the past year. Then I asked for his opinion on a number of changes I was considering for my apartment. Then I told him I wanted to train for, and ride in, the AIDS Life Cycle next year. Finally I brought up my somewhat irrational fear of being fired from my job, and how although on a personal level I wouldn't be crushed, such a development would suck money-wise. When I realized I'd done nothing for 45 minutes but pick apart my life - even though it's actually a really great one - I figured it's because I'm turning 25 and time isn't making any exceptions for me. What is it I really want? Where do I go for it? And how quickly can I make it happen?

The Weekend, in 10 Bullets

• Drank at / groped in the Castro.
• Tried to pass as cool and bro-ish by playing Golden Eye with two straights and a straight gay.
• Stewed over granola as loud Marina trash blathered on and on in Café du Soleil.
• Took my bike for a tune up, ended up with a giant new TV.
• Contemplated a run, then opted for a two-hour “spontaneous” nap.
• Drank at / groped in the Castro.
• Tried to pass as swanky Marina trash as a means of infiltrating their home turf for a badass burger.
• Ogled a 14-foot miniature of Disneyland at the Disney Family Museum.
• Contemplated a run, then opted for a leisurely stroll to the gym.
• Watched Top Secret!

In the Dark it all Feels the Same

Last night the power went down in the massive quadrant between Haight and Divisadero, meaning some 11,000 people were plunged into near-complete dark. I always think I'll be a survivor of the apocalypse until something like this happens. While all the hipsters who were kicked out of the Divisadero art walk and the Independent Theater mulled around, cool, I anxiously biked back to my apartment. "Just 1,100 more feet and I definitely will have made it home without being being run over." Once I'd reached safety, I realized my relaxing night without power wasn't going to be so cushy. A refresher course in what "power outage" actually means: no lights; no internet; no means of ordering food; no means of cooking food; no means of walking anywhere nearby for food. Thank God for the super-gay headlamp my brother's girlfriend recently gifted me. And also for my super-gay purchase of Tina Fey's Bossypants. Together, we whiled away the dark hours. 

One-paragraph Wonders

Maybe I've been working at a B2B agency too long, but I'm starting to really understand that old not-so bullshit saying, "less is more." My big hesitation when contemplating writing new blog posts is that I don't want to focus - or spend the time - composing a dozen hefty paragraphs that revolve around the inanities of my life. Fun as they are, I just can't commit when I have so much other stuff going on. After all, if I'm not out doing, what will there be to write about? Which is why, starting today, I'm  pulling another one of my I-promise's and am resolving to write a new blog post every day of exactly one paragraph in length. Oh, the topics we'll cover! Starting tomorrow.

New Boots

I'm at a loss for what to report, other than that I'm no longer an intern. Somehow, someone at work decided I'd make a decent full-time Copywriter, and the cool thing about bosses is that when they make a decision it actually happens. So now I come to my desk everyday and do the same stuff, except I'm salaried and I could probably leave for like an hour in the afternoon and stop acting like I report/am subservient to absolutely everyone, and so on. But instead I'll probably just still sit here and behave as though I'm working.

 Not having the "intern" suffix after whatever I'm doing out here in the real world is liberating, but also kind of sad. I really like the idea of having limitless choices regarding where and how I forge into the future, and I suppose I'll always have a bunch, but the field from which I pick them seems to be thinning. It turns out once you actually start being paid to write, you're qualified for much less other stuff. Ten years from now my skill set's going to read: "I can write stuff." Yay? Yay! Yay?!

 Also I bought a bike! I went with my friend Joe to Sports Basement for a "discount" bike and ended up spending $600. I stood there, hands in pockets, while Joe did all the talking. It was great. The bike is jet black and sleek as hell, and it's already named Sputnik by the company that manufactured it... which is a total bummer! Sputnik is a perfect bike name, and I want to keep calling it that but I can't just call my bike what's already printed on its side. That'd be a score of zero for creativity in my book - a score I just can't live with.

 I have other stuff to say (like, for instance, did Cabin in the Woods rip off "Smith Experience" or what?!) but I'm going to stop here because I'd prefer to get back into the swing of this blog describing specific scenes from my life, not just playing weekly host to a lame recap. The alternative is far more entertaining. Plus, the writing I do for this new job of mine discourages any instance of excess, which is like the exact opposite of how I normally write, so I'm feeling particularly self-conscious with this post.

End of the World Dreams

While waiting for Mad Men to download through iTunes last night (that's right - I pay for quality entertainment) I talked with a friend about the end-of-the-world dreams we'd both recently experienced. Hers involved flying through space after the planet combusted and hanging out in a free-wheeling, ethereal cloud that defied all laws of gravity (read: fun) with a bunch of other survivors. Mine dealt with alien snowdrifts that sucked people under amid ominous groaning and clanking sounds (read: smoke monster) as the world grew darker and colder. Between the two, I'd take flying in space any day.

Everyone has those childhood misnomer-type situations where they grow up thinking one thing is totally normal only to eventually be proven wrong by other people who in no way were brought up the same. In my case, I thought it was perfectly natural to dream regularly and vividly, and for a good 80% of those nightly occurring dreams to be nightmares.

Big bad wolves. Marauders outside the window. Crab-like spiders. Freddy Krueger. A small door in the back of a closet leading to an underground chamber where pure, unadulterated evil lurks behind an even smaller, locked door. This was the stuff my youthful personality formed from, and I tend to think it explains a lot.

After I came out in college the nightmares ebbed quite a bit, which I thought was some cool psychological proof of something or another - don't ask what. Now when they happen, though, they tend to be epic and foreboding in a way I never before could have imagined. The scary thing about the end of the world that my dreams so convincingly iterate - and that movies and books of the same topic don't do nearly so good a job with - is the overwhelming element of confused dread that the looms over the proceedings. If the world were to actually end today (and assuming aliens or a mysterious otherworldly force is involved, which is always the case in my dreams), the first thing to go would be telecommunications, and, accordingly, any and all sense of knowing what's going on elsewhere. And we need to know what's going on elsewhere to make sense of anything.

Without online news or cell phones, a confused hush would quickly steal across the atmosphere. And within that hush would be our undoing. Can you imagine not knowing the first thing about the state of the rest of the world as the alien snowdrifts pile up outside your darkened windows? I can - but only because it already happened to me once. And trust me, it wasn't fun.