Nothing New
My parents invited me over for dinner tonight. (I now feel like an adult — my parents invited me over to the house where I grew up.) Beforehand, I spent the afternoon in the city. I wasn’t really sure where I was going to go, but I went to the West Village and walked around for a while, and then I took the train up to the Upper West Side. I wound up walking west along 72nd Street, all the way to Riverside Park, which is a park along the Hudson River. I walked all the way down to the boardwalk and looked at New Jersey on the other side of the river. I looked north, saw the George Washington Bridge in the distance, and beyond that I could see the river winding its way north, north, all the way to upstate New York. I always get dreamy-eyed when I think of the New York hinterlands, 200 years ago, young robust Americans sailing northward, past town after town after town, all the way up to New England. And before that, the forested land was filled with Indians… I wish I could have been here back when all the land was undiscovered, waiting to be explored.
I walked past people who were fishing. I walked past various couples, gay and straight, sitting on benches and reading. I saw two elderly Jewish women leaning against a rail, wearing sunglasses and having some sort of conversation, smiles on their faces in the sun. This all got me very philosophical. I thought to myself that it’s wholly possible that my life could still be enjoyable in 30 or even 40 years. Maybe time won’t run out. Maybe I should delay some gratification for later. Maybe I should get a higher-paying job now, even if it means I’ll have longer hours, because then I’ll be able to live in Manhattan and have more money to spend. I can be “normal.” Though I know I’ve had this conversation before, and I know that normal isn’t really normal.
I left the park and walked around the Upper West Side for a while. I wound up in Central Park, where I saw more couples, and again I started to think about the future. I started to think about all the good things that lie ahead. All these things I look forward to experiencing. The rush of falling in love. The stability of having a steady salary. Having a summer place where my boyfriend and I can go and stock up our nice kitchen and spend money on things we like. All in the future. It’s all possible.
Later on, dinner at my parents house. My dad spent much of the day cooking. Delicious grilled chicken. It was quite a sight, though — the two little chickens were standing upright on the grill, each propped up on a beer can. And by “propped up” I mean that there were two beer cans standing on the grill, and each can was stuck up a chicken’s butt, keeping the chicken standing upright. When the chickens were ready to eat, and my dad took out the beer cans, my brother said something like, “I’d hate to be those chickens.” I smiled to myself and said nothing.
Afterward, my brother drove me home. We were talking about salaries, and it turns out that my brother’s twice-monthly paycheck, after taxes, is only 30 bucks less than mine, and I make $6,000 a year more than he does. And he has no loans and he’s currently living with my parents.
What the heck am I doing? I don’t know. It seems like it should be so simple for me to get a job with a law firm if that’s what I want. I don’t see why I can’t just make myself bite the bullet, work hard for a few years and then have a good amount of money saved up, or at least have my loans paid off, if that’s what I want. I don’t know why such things seem to be so complicated for me. I don’t know why I keep saying “I wish I were doing this” or “I wish I were doing that” and then I don’t take the steps necessary to get there. Sometimes it’s because deep down I don’t want to do it. But sometimes it’s just because deep down I’m scared. If I didn’t have this “time sickness” — if I could somehow feel secure in the fact that there will be time to do other things in the future — then I would be able to delay some gratification. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
This, of course, is not a new topic for my blog. Ad nauseum, right?