Filed under: Personal Life, Sports Writing | Tags: McColumn, New York City, Personal, Family, Friends, Helena, Childhood, Tennis, City living
I’ve always had an inexplicable affinity for fall. When October would roll into Montana, full of chilly mornings with mountain wind blowing across the valleys, I would wake with a certain excitement reserved only for the fall. The morning routine was distinct and unwavering: tip-toe across the cold hardwood floor of my room to a hot shower; eat a warm breakfast; pack a cold lunch; and always – always - call time and temp.
I was reminded of this a few weeks ago as my family converged on the Bay Area for my brother’s wedding. At one point during the rehearsal dinner, as my brother introduced one of his groomsmen, he joked how they still could remember the phone number for time and temperature, one of the most important seven-digit numbers to remember for any Helena kid who wanted to be outside in the fall. You could never tell by just looking out the window.
The story brought on lots of laughter from the crowd that night at the rehearsal dinner, but for me, it brought on a waive of memories I hadn’t expected on a weekend that focused on love, adult relationship and the future: those of childhood.
Autumn mornings (before school) and afternoons (after school) were those when I would race to our back alley and fill it with the sounds of a roaring crowd immersed in some game or another. Usually basketball in the fall, as one of my sisters was usually playing her high school season at that time. But often it would be tennis, too, playing the Denver Invitational or the Vancouver Open - fictional tournaments to fit the climate. My fervor and body heat as powerful as my imagination.
Fall mornings these past two years in New York I didn’t call time and temp once. I could check weather.com or just venture out not knowing how to dress, a mortal sin in my mother’s home. But instead of racing toward the A Train to catch a subway ride into the city, I was dashing to the back alley, steps from the warmth of our kitchen but worlds away. Worlds, worlds away.
The simplicity of childhood is so romantic to me now. Something I can’t have but I yearn for often. I dance naked in my apartment or talk to my friends in a goofy voice, trying to ellicit some sort of the foolish, giddy self that once dominated who I was for most fall days, dialing 4-4-2-1-7-3-0 with practiced ease and listened to the radio-like computerized voice saying “The time is 4:32.” “The temperature is 37 degrees.”
The thing is, it was almost useless to call time and temp. By the time I had been in the alley for five minutes, I had peeled off most layers and was down to a long sleeve and wind pants. Hitting the ball, or passing it against the garage as if it was my teammate on the baseline. In my world, there were two baselines in the same place: the tennis court and the basketball one. They were in the same place, but, oh, they were so certainly different.
I can’t quite remember the day that it changed so drastically. Perhaps it wasn’t one day. Perhaps it was a slow change, a change you can’t quite put your finger on. I didn’t call time and temp that day. I may have been on AOL instant messenger before I decided to go outside for a while, doing the best to avoid my middle school homework.
I remember kids passing through the alley sometimes, and me shamefully standing in the crevices of the garage hoping that they would pass quickly, not wanting to chat or be questioned as to what I was doing or who I was pretending to be. My cheeks burned of red not from the cold like it did in years before, but because of some sort of uncomfort or embarrassment.
Time and temp didn’t follow me to high school, or to college for that matter, in Seattle. It died slowly, being replaced by up-to-the-minute forecasts and “Hourly” weather maps on the internet. Now, iPhones don’t even have to dial. They only display. I wonder what happened to the time and temp voice guy. Out of a job, too?
I was awkwardly proud of myself the day an article came out in the newspaper about my budding tennis career and the writer had focused on my relationship with my alley. He talked of my dedication and my self-discipline, about how these things had helped me beat the best players in Montana tennis. It didn’t, however, mention time and temp, or the cars that would slow to let me finish a point, or grab a rebound. It talked of future and faith, instead of an unbridled childhood. It was looking toward the future, and I guess I was, too.
I think about time and temp a lot in New York, the weather can be as temperamental here as that of Big Sky country. Some mornings, when I take the train to the famed West 4th Street stop in the Village, I emerge from the subway station at a concrete park, packed with a basketball court and walls for handball, tennis practice and the like.
Never do I see any little kids hitting against the wall, measuring a forehand while describing the back story of an up-and-coming-teen (“He just isn’t supposed to win these kind of matches! What heart!”) while his breath spews out in front of him, filling the autumn air with young heat.
It makes me sad to see these empty courts, to know that no kids are rolling out of bed onto cold hardwood floors and making the way to the bathroom, dialing 4-4-2-1-7-3-0 on their way. I understand that part of it is city living, but I ignore such an excuse.
Time and temperature still exists. Right now, it’s 8:43 in Helena, and 47 degrees. A perfect evening for a little back-alley tennis. Since it’s past day-light savings time, the garage lamp would have to provide the lighting for an evening battle like this, but it would cast dramatic shadows of a classic, and the crowd would hardly notice.
I hope some kid is out there. I wish it was me.
(photo by Mattron via Flickr.)
Filed under: Personal Life, Work Life | Tags: McColumn, Job, New York City, Personal, Journalism, Student development
Three months ago, on my first day of work, I met a woman at the bookstore by chance who worked in the student administration field, a career realm I’ve considered going to graduate school for over the last 18 months. We chatted briefly, but before we could get deep into conversation, we realized that we had several West Coast connections to make — people we both knew that all worked in student services.
That night, riding the train home from work, I couldn’t shake the fact that on my first day of work at a new job that I had hoped would help me buoy my writing career, I met someone that not only works in the career field that I was interested in secondarily, but that also a person who I had made personal connections with. It just didn’t seem like a chance encounter.
The following day I headed into my second day on the job. I was consumed by the events of the prior day, seeing them as signs of what was clearly meant to be. As I sat down for my first staff meeting, I started talking with my co-worker, a rare-book specialist in her 60s.
“I’m a freelance writer,” I told her, making sure she knew I wasn’t another dorky book junky who was here to sling hardcovers. “Ah, that’s nice,” she responded matter-of-factly. “My son writes for the Times.”
The New York Times, she meant. And for the second straight day my jaw almost hit the floor. Never in my life had I met anyone who had worked for the New York Times, and here is this woman next to me saying one of her children is one of the best national-news feature writers around. The dorky book junkies were no match for the inner journalistic geekdom that lived inside of me.
I had to stop myself right then and there and realize one thing: the signs were pointing in different directions, and I had my feet firmly planed at the fork in the road, my body wanting to move forward in two opposite ways, and my heart and mind completely stuck, unsure of what to do next.
This all came hurdling back at me this past week when I went into a magazine for an in-person meeting with the editor in chief regarding freelance articles. I spent much of the week prior preparing my portfolio and dusting up my resume, hoping that a meeting like this might give me more clarity about which signal I really should be following from here on out.
I got off the subway at 34th Street just shy of 5 PM, meaning the sidewalks were packed in a way they only are in the movies. I moved with the throng of people, letting the wave carry me to Madison Avenue. It wasn’t until I had been walking for a few minutes that I noticed I was walking the wrong direction: west, and not east – I had to turn around.
I stood there on 34th, shoulders smacking against my own as I turned to trudge against the crowd and back toward my destination. Maybe I should just get back into the subway, I thought. This is the ultimate sign… I’M WALKING THE WRONG WAY!
But I continued passed the subway and made my way to the offices on 34th and Madison, taking on my meeting with some jaded confidence and letting things happen as they had been set up to. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but as I walked away from the building an hour later with three business cards and the reverberations of “We’ll be looking forward to your pitches” echoing in my head, I couldn’t help but think that maybe I had ignored such a sign this time.
In two week’s time, I head to Chicago for the weekend to meet with friends and tour Loyola University. I’m not going there to look at their journalism program, but rather to see what their graduate school in student development has to offer. It certainly isn’t something I’m sure of, but at this point, I might as well continue to straddle the line between the lanes of my life. Journalism and student development have little in common, but I feel their pull equally, undoubtedly.
What signs are to come is something I’m unsure of. At this point I’m more apt to sit back and let the signs happen as they will, be amused by their sudden and unexpected arrival into my life, and then turn my head over my shoulder to peek back at them as I continue forward. Which direction am I headed, you ask? I’m not sure. But for now, I think that’s a good sign. I’ll hold it up proudly.
(photo by pokoroto via flickr.)
Filed under: Personal Life, Work Life | Tags: Financial, Housing works, Job, McColumn, New York City, Personal
The women who cleaned the hotel, restaurants, cafe and clubs on Fire Island worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day. They scurried from one spill to another, wiping and sweating, mopping and dusting, all the while chatting in furiously fast Spanish, the stuff of their Colombian roots. On the rare nights that I was up late, I would walk passed the open windows of the gym only to see them on the elliptical machines, as if their dawn-to-dusk day wasn’t enough time on their feet already.
Since I’ve returned from the island to another, larger island – Manhattan – I’ve felt as though my schedule has began to creep toward the long days, nights and never-ending run around my Colombian friends dedicated themselves to. While at times it feels invigorating, it can also feel draining, hollow and eerily lonely: a battle between working to live or living to work that is still being fought on the front-lines of my day-to-day life.
At 24, the financial friction that I face isn’t something that is uncommon of those around me. We are a new generation of the do-anything-to-survive mentality: a reality brought on by an economy in the gutter and jobs that include things like “benefits” and “salary” are few and far between. There’s a new way to make your way, and it doesn’t include much sleep.
The fact that I’m still working low-wage, think-with-your-hands-and-feet sort of jobs over a year after earning a college degree is something I struggle with often. Is this what I’ve been waiting for? Have I really arrived? It’s a point in life that certainly isn’t easy to navigate, but the murky waters of a 21st-Century recession have made the swim a difficult one: we’re dog paddling for survival.
Last week my boss at the bookstore asked me if I wanted to cover an event the following Tuesday night. “Covering” means being around as the point person at the bookstore for such event, making sure things run smoothly and assisting the event people if they need any in-house help. Beyond that, it pays well, a pretty incentive for someone who avoids cabs like the plague and will take free food over healthful, or good-for-you food at any time.
I hesitated, feeling as though something was happening that night. But upon close inspection of my well-kept daily planner and racking my brain for what could be holding me back, I committed to Tuesday night and carefully added the future payment to the well-functioning budget inside my brain: this’ll be a nice kicker.
It was days later that my friend Mike called with an invitation not normally subject to voicemail: “Hey, wanna meet the President?” Mike works in DC, and the organization he works for was throwing an event in which President Obama was making an appearance. The date? You guessed it: Tuesday night.
So I enter the world of finance and friction. To work on Tuesday night would be that extra change in my pocket, but to bow out would be a chance to meet the President of the United States, a man I greatly admire and am in awe of. The question isn’t “Which should I do?” because that answer is rather easy. Instead, the question is this: “When will it end?”
When will there be a time when I can kick the 50-hour work week and find the time for my own time? When can I have the freedom to explore New York City a little instead of working, riding, eating and sleeping? When can I enter into that unchartered territory of salary and set schedules and not have to commit to Sunday cover shifts to make it all work?
We all have to face such drama and difficulty in one way or another. And perhaps this is a glimpse of what life will be in 20 years, when I have my own kids and I have to fight my own schedule to make sure I’m there for the soccer games, the piano recitals and the parent-teacher conferences. Guess it just doesn’t get easier, does it?
But for now, it remains an open question. Do I continue to work the extra hours, the string of a dozen days, the cover shifts, for a few extra Benjamins? Or is life more worth it if my Tuesday, Friday and Sunday nights are clear so that I can be doing more exploring of this city that I live in?
New York is a place of great adventure and great expense. Nothing is easy, everything is exciting and pretty much each waking moment costs you at least a buck or two. Proving myself as the reliable, hard-working one can get me far, but is the place I reach once I’ve proved myself really where I want to be? Or am I right back to the real of which-should-I-choose and making last-minute decisions on life in the red or the black?
Tuesday night I’d like to meet President Obama, but, first, I have to get my shift covered. Perhaps I should keep the complaining to a minimum, that’s a sentence my Colombian friends would probably never mutter. Moreover, they wouldn’t have the option, and for that, I guess I’m one of the lucky ones.
(photo by NewYorkDailyPhoto via Flickr)
Filed under: Queer Writing | Tags: Activism, Community, LGBTQ, Marriage equality, McColumn, New York City, Personal, Politics, Self love, Washington DC
A busy day for most of us includes this: click the mouse (repeatedly); type on the keyboard (constantly); and stare at the screen (never-ending-ly); all done until we’ve reach a state of exhaustion. It’s the way the world works in the 21st century. We’re products of our own demise.
What is fascinating to me about the way computers (and the internet) have taken over our lives is that this one single entity can be so multi-faceted. There’s videos to watch, podcasts to listen to, articles to read, photo galleries to see; the list is never-ending. We could keep ourselves busy on the web for a lifetime, so it seems.
But on Sunday, as I descend on Washington DC with a close friend from Montana and perhaps thousands of other 20-somethings for the National Equality March, we’ll be taking the fight off the screen on and onto the streets: an old-school tactic for a new-school fight.
I and many others have learned over the last year that the fight for gay rights is anything but new. The fight, however, for marriage equality is rather new, something that has been a political firestorm over the last decade and its brief history has had a complicated and turvy history.
Congressman Barney Frank has made it public that he is confused why the march is taking place. He doesn’t think it will do any good, he believes the fight should happen elsewhere. But for a generation that spends most of its time clicking, typing and staring, doesn’t walking do us a little good?
In the grand scheme of things, this weekend is a small blip on the radar screen. But put enough blips together, and you have an image that any person would want to pay attention to on the TV screen, on the computer screen, or, as Milk proved, on the big screen.
An issue like gay marriage has to employ a campaign as diverse as the people behind it. More importantly, however, it also has to use tactics that are as varied as mediums that people consume information through: the images, the words, the sights, the sounds.
To ignore the fact that a march is a powerful thing is to ignore the power of humanity itself. Sunday’s crowd is as dedicated to this issue as those in our nation’s churches are to God and as passionate about what they are cheering for as New Yorkers for their Yankees. The coming together of people of one belief can speak volumes for one issue, especially when the solidarity spreads across the nation.
March co-chair Cleve Jones has made is clear that this is a weekend about people, about the way humans can change. There are meetings and workshops all over DC today, and tomorrow President Obama will address the Human Rights Campaign dinner after a long silence on this issue. Sunday is a culmination – a celebration – of what has been accomplished. But more than that, it’s another step towards what can be done.
And that’s the one thing clicking, typing and staring can’t do on their own: make steps toward change. It all has to come together, just like the sights, sounds, and words of the internet they’re consumed through. Because when you ad the steps of a march to the power of the internet, you make great strides in the fight for equality.
(photo by will parson via flickr)
Filed under: Personal Life | Tags: Brooklyn, Childhood, Community, McColumn, New York City, Personal, Politics
Every Monday morning my alarm clock blares at the ungodly hour of 6 AM and I roll out of bed with shut eyes and aching muscles. I cringe at the realization that it is, indeed, time to wake up, and pull on my sweatpants as I plod to the bathroom.
By 6:30 I’m out the door, dressed with a bandana to hide my bed head and the ever-frightening combination of croc shoes with socks. I’m on my way to do laundry on these mornings, the one time I’m certain the laundromat isn’t going to be overflowing with activity.
Two months ago I moved in with good friends to an apartment in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. It’s a far cry from the studio I was sharing with another friend in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, for my first year in New York. In the first place, there’s no laundry in the building, hence my Monday morning routine.
I walk slowly to the laundromat, my basket of dirty clothes bouncing off my legs and I trudge my way there. There’s trash on the sidewalks in Crown Heights, lots of trash, especially in the morning. I pass Snickers wrappers and bags of no-name cheese bites and pastry cakes, the B44 plows South on Nostrand, usually full of early-morning commuters.
Three fourths of Crown Heights inhabitants can trace their roots back to the Caribbean, and another fifth to Africa itself. Needless to say, the neighborhood has a little different feel than the west side of Helena, Montana, where I spent the first 18 years of my life.
I’m often times intrigued by the culture, the people, the activity that my neighborhood hosts. I’m unsure of whether to be scared of the fact that there are usually police officers on every corner at night, or take solace in it. I have never felt unsafe, but certainly uncomfortable. And why wouldn’t I? I’m out of my comfort zone.
There are different challenges that we can all face during our lifetimes, different ways to learn more about others and how to be an engaged, active citizen in our own community, that eventually connects us back to the greater globe.
Somehow, we’ve transitioned into a world that believes that you’re either a racist or you’re not. Isn’t there room for learning anymore? Isn’t there a place in life to be curious? To ask questions and experience things for yourself?
Perhaps I’m getting off track, or, on the other hand: perhaps I’m right on track. I love where I live not because I police on the corners and garbage on the ground, but more because I’m living in a place that’s different from what I know. There’s the smell of Caribbean food wafting through the air, and plenty of loud-and-in-charge personalities walking the streets that make for an interesting walk to the laundromat.
Being a gay male, I understand what it means to be different. But in my neighborhood, ‘different’ is ‘normal’, and for the first time, I feel as though I’m the odd man out, carrying my laundry down the street, my pale face barely awake.
This isn’t Manhattan, and this certainly isn’t Helena. But for now, this is where I call home, and a place I feel comfortable to be curious for just a little while.
(photo by gkjarvis via flickr.)
Filed under: Personal Life, Queer Writing | Tags: Childhood, DC, Family, Marriage equality, McColumn, Politics, San Francisco
I had this feeling three years ago: a feeling of warmth and safety and the swirling feeling of familiarity. It was at our last family wedding, my older sister marrying her childhood sweetheart and utters of “happily ever after” reverberated off the walls. I was in my hometown for the celebration, and in a certain sense, the entire affair was beyond perfection.
This weekend my family will celebrate its first wedding since then. We’ll make our way from Montana, from Idaho, from overseas and from New York, to the Bay Area where my brother will get married – the first boy in the family to do so.
In another two weeks from now, I’ll trudge down from New York to Washington D.C. for the Equality March, a taking of the nation’s capital walk by proponents and supporters of gay marriage, a fight that has (rightfully) been pushed aside by worries of the economy and health care.
For one day, however, the marchers in DC will aim to put the gay marriage fight back on the map. It’ll be a day of celebration, of dancing, of chanting. It’ll be a day of happiness for many, and sadness and frustration for others. It’ll be a day similar to a wedding in many ways – a day centered on love.
Often times, my friends and I feel ill equipped to make change in this world. There are so many battles to be fought; it can feel overwhelming and daunting, like a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. But perhaps Sunday will be another dish scrubbed clean in ever-murky water. Just how high the pile is stacked is the next question to face.
There is a certain feeling that comes along with being in your early 20s, something most of us are unsure of how to navigate. The coupling of ‘I can conquer the world in a single day’ and ‘I feel worthless and ineffective’ can come swooshing through all at once, and with so much to fight for, we wonder: where should our energy go?
It might be easy for the queer community to take on what many would call a selfish cause. But to us, and to many that support us, the cause itself is beyond selfish – it’s fundamental. It’s the fight for a right that every human being should have: marrying the one you love with all the comfort and circumstance provided by law.
In preparing to write this piece, I watched one of my favorite scenes from “The Family Stone”, a powerful and provocative scene in which the girlfriend being judged (Sarah Jessica Parker), finds herself in a hopeless loss of words when asking the mother (Diane Keaton) if she really ever did ‘wish for gay children.’
It’s beyond awkward, and towards the end becomes frightening and touching all in one, when the father (Craig Nelson) silences the table and Keaton comforts her gay son, telling him ‘you’re more normal than any asshole sitting at this table.’
When I saw this scene in the theatre four years ago, I couldn’t help but tear up a little. The Stones and the McCarvels are somewhat similar, but so too are we like Sarah Jessica’s character; not quite sure what homosexuality would (and will) bring to a kid in a world that already holds enough difficulty.
Beyond the silver screen, the issue still holds. There are still believers out there (and plenty of them) that think sexuality comes from nurture over nature and that homosexuality doesn’t deserve to be dignified with something called marriage. And the fight lives on.
As we celebrate this weekend, I know the same feelings of warmth, safety and familiarity will descend upon me again, and I’ll make memories with my family that we can hold for a long, long time. But is it too much for me to ask for those same feelings on my own day? I don’t think so. Those are feelings for everyone, especially on their own day.
Filed under: Personal Life | Tags: City living, Community, Family, Friends, McColumn, New York City, Personal, TV
I can see the opening scene pretty well: my mom is hugging me in Bozeman, dropping me off at my friend Liz’s place so that I can fly out the next morning. She doesn’t cry, but her eyes are wet a little as we pull back from each other and she squeezes my hand. “I love you, Nick,” she says, the camera pulling away from her and capturing a beautiful Montana sunset.
The next thing we realize, as our good-byes are dragged out, is that we’re both flying to Denver in the morning – her for a business appointment, and me to make a connection for my flight to New York City, the place where I’m moving away from home to, forever. We’ll see each other the next day.
OK, it’s a little dramatic. But what reality TV show isn’t, right? Recently, one of my best friends in the city has joked about how our lives in New York are fit for a reality TV series. Last fall would have been season one, with most of us arriving in Manhattan with aspirations barely larger than our college debt, and dreams that only a city this shiny and bustling could contain.
I look at the last 12 months that I’ve been here and I feel rather proud for what I’ve accomplished. Life is always a roller coaster, pulling us up before we coming whooshing back down, often face first, and usually into some New York-made concrete. But to me it’s about trudging on and making the best of it, and making sure that when your face does hit the cement that you peel it off and look at the impression you made on the ground – there’s plenty to learn from that.
I can’t help but feel like I’m missing out on some things. Missing out on my nieces and nephew growing bigger in the Northwest, missing out on friends and their everyday lives on the West Coast, missing out on my parents friendship as we transition from the parent-adult gig to a more grown up, we-love-each-other sort of relationship.
But I do feel like I’m doing the right thing, that I’m in the right place. There’s no exact reason for being in New York, I realized this week. I’m not super into any particular scene, I don’t frequent museums or go to many concerts, I’m not even much of a shopper or diner, for that matter. But that’s something about this place that sparks me, and I can’t really let that feeling go. Isn’t that what we all want every morning: spark?
I do wonder how the producers would shape my story line. Am I the failed romantic? The dramatic one? The one who just can’t get his sh*t together? Perhaps, in bits and pieces, all of the above. But so far I’ve liked my story line in New York. And though I have no control over how the script will be written for this season, the next and the next, I feel like I would be sitting down every Wednesday night to watch myself on the tube, enthralled by the journey I’m taking – by the journey we’re all taking.
The reality is, reality TV kind of sucks. It plays with people’s images, fosters selfishness and encourages catty behavior. I guess I prefer real life. At least, I prefer the life I’m living, here and now. I can’t wait to see what happens in the second season. And who knows from there on out, it’s all up to producer a producer we all know. He calls himself “Life”.
(photo by sam_ via flickr)
Filed under: Personal Life | Tags: City living, McColumn, New York City, Personal, Self love, Summer
I never can stop thinking about time. It’s always in my head, revolving the way the second hand clicks its way around the clock: never stopping; always moving. I never seem to have enough time; I never can make ammends with this thing that controls our lives so. But then again, time seems endless. There’s always a “next time” and “until then.” There always time.
I write often about time in my journal. About the time that has passed since I left Helena, about the time until I’m in love, with a partner and children and a home of our own. I write about the time I used to think the world was one way, and how in a future time, I’ll think it another. I’m still awed by it, like it’s some kind of sunset with brilliant oranges and reds and yellows and pinks fading before me. But as fast as I run, as much as I think about it, I can never catch that sunset. I can never stop time.
I envied Zack Morris in Saved By The Bell. He always got to use his famous “Timeout!” when things were going wrong, talking through the screen to you and me and figuring things out just the way he wanted them. But to me (and I think, to you, too) there is no such timeout. There’s no way to step away from time, into a vacuum of thought and peace and self and be able to be without time. It ticks away. But where does it go?
Recently, one of my good friends starting practicing meditation. She’ll escape from her day to meditate, to clear her head, to step away from time. I envy her and am in awe of how powerful an experience it must be. It’s time spent for the self, to figure everything out. Our modern-day Zack Morris “Timeout”, as is lots of what other friends do: writing, reading, relaxing, walking, running, playing music, napping.
As I’ve returned to New York and began my life anew here once again, I feel as though I’m waiting for something. I’m waiting for time to arrive, to blow its horn in my ear and let me know that I have arrived, that it’s okay to take some time, and stick it in my pocket for one of those sunsets – or sunrises, for that matter.
But waiting isn’t the answer, and I still can’t be quite sure what is. I struggle managing my 12-hour days, my 14-hour days… my 20-hour days. In one moment I feel timeless and invincible, the next moment I feel ragged and burnt out. Time is waging a war against me, and I guess since I’m human, I’ll ultimately be the loser. So time says.
I guess instead of worrying about the how, the when, the where, the if… I should just let time go. The best present I can give myself is understanding it just keeps passing; time itself is timeless. And invincible. There’s no point in trying to catch the slippery monster.
“The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its own capacities will find no rest,” Rumi says. I agree, and I intend to rest a little in my life. But I also intend to take advantage of my time, every waking second of it.
(photo by f/1.4 via flickr)
Filed under: Personal Life | Tags: Childhood, City living, McColumn, New York City, Personal, Random acts, Seattle, Seattle U
Looking over my columns from the last eight months, I’m proud of the stuff written. I’ve touched on love, on life, on the challenges I’ve faced in moving to the big city – none of it has been easy. But it’s been nothing short of entertaining in the least, and I find that almost every morning I wake up excited about the day. Life is an adventure. Period. And in that adventure, there are always unexpected run-ins…
Since moving out of Montana almost five years ago, I always seem to seek out familiarity wherever I go. Perhaps this is a Montana quality, perhaps it is just something that I do myself, but no matter where I go (so it seems), so, too, do people I know.
In the summer before third grade, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I spotted Mrs. McKenna, a teacher from my school at the Missoula mall, 90 miles from Helena, my hometown. There she was! Shopping at JC Penneys? I couldn’t believe that I was seeing Mrs. McKenna out of school in the first place. And in Missoula?! This was pure insanity. I darted between the circular clothing racks, careful for her not to see me… surely it would be disastrous if we were to speak, I decided.
A couple months later, when my family was returning from a weekend in Spokane (“the big city”, to us Montanans), we stopped at McDonald’s in Kellogg, Idaho, for a little bathroom break. I was standing in line, eyeing the Chicken McNugget value meal when a voice behind me said: “Hello, Nick.”
I whirled around and there she was! It was Mrs. McKenna, standing behind me with her dark, curly hair and her purse strapped tightly to her shoulder. I was dumbfounded. Was this woman stalking me? What kind of alternate universe was I living in? The conversation was awkward and forced: “I bet you’re excited to head back to school,” she mused. ‘Nope,’ I thought. ‘I’m mostly excited for those Chicken McNuggets.’ I smiled politely and nodded.
For some odd reason, Mrs. McKenna would just be the beginning of it.
During my freshman year of college, I went home to Helena for Christmas and found myself quite bored. Sure, I enjoyed seeing my family and being home for a bit, but the excitement of the Emerald City lingered, and I was eager to return. At that time, I was frequenting online chat rooms, passing time by chatting with guys from all over the world, trying to learn more about the “gay world” via the internet, which – surprisingly and, honestly – isn’t always a bad thing.
I met a certain guy in a chat room, we started “dating” (talking online a few times a day), but as I headed back to my life in Seattle, things fizzled. I quit responding to his “Hey buddy” instant messages and eventually, he quit trying.
Later that year, as I geared up for sophomore year and to be a Resident Assistant, Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans. As they announced during our R.A. training one day that Seattle U would take in some ‘refugee students’ for the fall quarter, I realized the only person I really knew of in New Orleans was this guy I had met on the Internet.
‘Better send him an email and see if things are okay,’ I thought. When I sat down at my computer that evening to send him an email, I opened my account to see an email from who else? Him. “I’m coming to your school,” it said. “I hope I’m not crowding your space. This is all happening so fast. My apartment is completely under water.”
I was dumbfounded. Some guy I only knew from a few weeks of online flirting was going to be invading my precious collegiate space? It felt rather intrusive. But then, in thinking about it more, I realized his life had been intruded on a little more than mine had – by a hurricane, no less. In this situation, he won the pity party hands down.
Let’s just say things didn’t end happily ever after for the two of us – this is no You’ve Got Mail tale. We did become friends, and he’s a tremendous guy doing tremendous things with his life. But wow, look what the storm blew in, right?
These memories mostly were mostly spurned by another recent run-in, a New York City at that.
Three years ago, in my first visit to New York, I sat in a coffee shop called Think in Greenwich Village working on a term paper due when I was to return to Seattle. The girl next to me was struggling with her Internet connection, so in my attempt to save the day we started chatting and got along quite well.
In true early-20s networking fashion, she gave me her card and I was bug-eyed when I saw she was working in marketing for the New York Times. The next summer we had dinner one night while I was interning at TENNIS Magazine and she told me all about living in NYC and working at the NYT.
Over the last two years, however, we hadn’t talked at all. We were Facebook friends, we had each other’s emails and I even would pass her name often in my cell phone contacts list.
Thursday morning I attended the U.S. Open draw ceremony, which featured on-stage interviews with Roger Federer and Serena Williams. Just as the event was about to begin, a young girl slipped into the empty row directly in front of me.
“Excuse me,” I said, tapping her on the shoulder. She turned around with a what-did-I-do-wrong face. “Don’t I know you?” I asked. Her face lit up. “Oh my god! Nick!” Neither of us could believe that we were in the same room as each other, much less that she had sat directly in front of me in a 300-seat auditorium.
“My co-workers were making fun of me for coming up here and sitting alone!” She explained. “But I wanted a good view of Serena!”
“What a small world!” She exclaimed. ‘Yes,’ I thought. ‘What a small world. What a small, small world.’
(photo by blogrodent via flickr)
Filed under: Personal Life | Tags: McColumn, New York City, Personal, Planning, The Future, Uncertainty
Early summer, as the end of August approaches and summer thoughts of heat and sun turn to autumn ones of cool air and multi-colored leaves, I head to the school supply store to make the most important purchase of my calendar year: the daily planner.
I first had a daily planner almost a dozen years ago, as a 7th grader. I remember it well: an At-A-Glance branded little book, complete with weekly and monthly calendars that I filled with science assignments for Mrs. Erickson’s class and traveling basketball games and tennis tournaments.
I made that journey today. It was the first time I had done it in New York City, so I was a little nervous as to where I should go. But after a couple of mishaps, I stumbled into a small stationary store on Bleecker and descended on their daily planner selection, one that rivaled that of the Helena Staples where I had bought so many planners in the past.
But whereas those purchases in Helena were always well planned, well executed and done with little uncertainty, today was a much different process. I scanned and picked, flipped and thumbed. I once made my way to the register only to turn back and start all over again. LIke I said: this is the most important decision of the year.
While browsing for such a reverent article of unwritten literature, I thought back to the last two Augusts and my planner purchases: there was 2007, when I had just returned from a summer in New York and was prepping for my senior year at Seattle U. And there was last year: another planner purchased at the Helena Staples just prior to my trip abroad to Thailand before I made my way to move to New York City.
Of the dozen or so Augusts that come to mind, each with their own planner adventure to speak of, never have I had such an unplanned life to buy a planner for. Yes, I have a full-time job and plenty of items to fill my calendar. But comes three, six, nine months from now, I have no idea what I’ll be doing.
For most of my life, I would have found that terrifying. Not to have notes, plans and schedules to scribble down for a year in advance is something I’m not used to. But today, as I walked away from the stationary store with my new purchase placed safely in my backpack, it felt good.
I have no idea what is to come; no idea where I’ll be next August to buy my next planner. I have no idea what these twelve months will bring or if from a year from now, I might be starting graduate school in a completely new program or working as a bona-fide journalist. I have no idea if I’ll be back home in Helena, living in Seattle again, or right here in New York or someplace different.
I’ve always seen myself as a planner. I’ve always seen myself as someone who likes to know what’s next. But for once I feel okay with simply not. I feel okay with simply today. It’s a great feeling to have. I guess I just didn’t see it written down in my planner. And for that, I’m thankful
(photo by pixellated spiff via flickr.)
