last day of summer, or the return of may 2005

as far as the calendar is concerned, today is the last day of summer--the autumnal equinox lurking just beyond sunset. but come september we are generally ready for a new era, for new beginnings. even if it is still 80 degrees and sunny.

even on the best days in september/it's hard to find my peace of mind

on the last day of august, it hit me that many of my aspects of my current life in philly eerily mirror my reality in madison over 6 years ago. i wrote down a list of things that are identical to my final month in the midwest, in the spring of 2005:

-fucking broke/in debt/un(der)-employed
-registered with a temp agency with unfortunate, demoralizing results
-heartache across distance/attempting to salvage a seemingly impossible long-distance relationship
-making plans to move to western massachusetts to live with a close, platonic female friend
-drinking heavily after a long period of sobriety
-involvement in local bookstore collective my primary commitment

crazy, huh? it's so interesting to discover the weird ways our histories repeat themselves. hopefully by reflecting on where i was at back then and the subsequent years that followed i can move in new directions. i want to go beyond the familiar and start a new. unlike 2005, i am committed to returning to school and am currently applying to goddard college's master in individualized studies program. trying to focus on that now, despite the weight of these other challenges. i am ready for the fall. 

impatiently patient

sitting in the waiting room lately. it's that gnawing mental state of disconnection from the present, from my immediate surroundings. something bigger and better does lie ahead, down the road, but reaching that point feels improbable, almost unattainable--as if this current moment will never end.

but there are glimpses of better things to come on the horizon. soon i will be sitting on the beach, back in the land where i grew up. very soon, actually. it's funny how time works though. we're so impatient and then the things we are desperately waiting for often arrive before we're even prepared for them.

i want to be more engaged in the world. i want to have more going on and begin to challenge myself again, to do new things and put myself out there. time to leave the waiting room and start pushing the boundaries.

moments of transition

this year is half over. after a challenging winter of both upheaval and stagnancy, the spring was a transitional moment, offering me an opportunity to begin the process of starting things over. after couch-surfing off and on for a month or so, i said goodbye to the apartment i had shared with lv in west philly. on march 17th--an unusually warm st. patrick's day--james helped me move all of my belongings into traci's car and then into my temporary, transitional residency in south philly. for the next 2 months i lived with traci's boss from a certain progressive lawyers' organization. he was moving out of the 3 bedroom row home he had rented for the past 3 years on june 1st and welcomed the company and donations (in the form of "rent") to said organization. the whole situation worked out really well for both of us.

moments of transition are important. they help us put things into perspective and prepare for the next era of our lives. that's where i'm at now. just as spring ended (commencing the second half of the year) and the tempatures climbed back into the 90's again, i moved just down the street, staying in south philly. i now live in a beautiful house with 4 other humans and 5 cats. this is where i want to be right now and it makes a lot of sense as i work towards going back to school. in navigating the bureaucracies of student loan debt and collections, i have come to terms with the reality that i must wait until next spring to start school. this will give me a little extra time to get ready on various levels, so it's probably a good thing. i'm applying to both temple university (master of liberal arts) and goddard college (master of individualized studies) and i think either way i will be happy. now that i have entered my 30's i'm just ready for the next level, the next epoch. the next challenge. i'm psyched.

(a line from that one song about living for the moment)

forget about doom and gloom. i don't want to be paralyzed by fear of the world outside of our safety bubbles, or the reckless fear of that world coming to an end. but i can't deny that things are getting scary here in the early 21st century--with tornadoes in places that have never seen tornadoes before, never-ending oilspill monstrosities, heatwaves that kill the human spirit, and air conditioners that kill the planetary immune system.

instead of hiding in fear, these things inspire me to work towards being as present as possible. i don't want to invest everything in an uncertain future. i want to actualize my dreams as soon as i can. i don't want to put them on lay-away. i want to live for today and tomorrow (and perhaps the next one). but not for a few years down the line, or a fucking decade from now. this is all we have. let's not take it for granted.

your responsible planning is irresponsible. let's be impatient.

birthdays, bagels, and graduations

past.
this past weekend, i found myself in new york city for the first time in far too long. it was nice to catch up with a few friends that live there, but the main purpose of the trip was to celebrate tyler's 30th birthday. i have known tyler, literally, my entire life so i would not have missed this for the world. waiting outside the turkish restaurant in astoria for the rest of the of the party to arrive, i called my brother and then had to hang up shortly after as tyler waved to me through a car window. a few seconds later i noticed a woman that looked a whole lot like tyler's mother who i hadn't seen in at least 5 years. and it was! she surprised him by flying up from austin, texas just for the occasion. his brother and father (also surprisingly) came down from massachusetts too, so the whole family--my sort of extended-neighbor family--was all present. it was great. after dinner we ended up at a latin dance club in queens. continuing a tradition that began last may, tyler's girlfriend grisel and her sisters and cousins sang along to all their favorite tunes from growing up in colombia and we all danced like crazy. in between dj sets, some latin rock groups played while a dvd of live ramones concerts played on all of the bar's tv screens. quite surreal. and amazing.

present.
this morning was bagel tuesday at the gym. even though i've been fighting off a cold the past couple days, i woke up determined to finally check out this monthly situation. it was nice that they provided free coffee as well, but the "bagels" were beyond disappointing. the thin-style they offered tasted exactly like a slightly thicker pita pocket--but even worse than that. this is all to say, i belong to a gym and that is weird and should be surprising to anyone reading this. i'm getting a little more comfortable being there, but the space is still foreign territory to me with its only particular culture and mores outside of my comfort zone; not dissimilar to casinos or stripclubs. despite this specific chain's commitment to being "safe" and a "judgement free zone," it is still a hypermasculine space with rigid gender norms and traditional, well, everything. i'm just trying to keep my heart healthy as i advance in years, and the price is right.

future. 
this coming weekend, my mother is graduating from elms in college in western mass in their rn to bsn program. we're all so proud of her. i'm taking the time off work so i can go up and celebrate. can't wait! my friend amanda, who i also work with now, is driving up to northampton for a bridal shower this weekend so we're gonna roadtrip it together from philly. i'm looking forward to seeing my family again, being there for my mom, and seeing some northampton friends sunday night. karaoke at bishop's anyone? 

an impending future of grad school

sometimes we have no choice but to focus on the future. and sometimes the future is only a couple months away. preparing for this moment can help us get through a present reality that is unfulfulling, or rife with day-to-day uncertainty. this vision inspires us to make it through, to make it happen.

my impending future begins in late-august. my vision is to return to studenthood, pursuing a masters degree. i am excited about dedicating my life toward one thing--a temporary autonomous zone free of neverending questions marks.

recently, i have had the state of vermont on my mind and began entertaining the idea, once again, of applying to goddard college as well as temple. the application deadline for both is mid-summer. both have start dates in august. when i woke up this morning i turned on the radio and an ad for temple's master of liberal arts (mla) program was playing on npr. i interpretted this as a peculiar sign, at least a mild inspiration for getting my shit together.

i'm just gonna go for it and apply to both programs over the next month. letters of recommendation will be requested, bureaucracies will be navigated, and a seemingly crippling personal financial situation will be addressed full-on. all in pursuit of a future of new possibilities.

past/present/future

if you got one foot in the past and one foot in the future, then you're pissing on the present.  -an ancient proverb

now that i have passed into my 30's and people all around me (myself including) are making, or are preparing to make, major life decisions i'm obsessed with how our present realities are informed by our past and/or by our potential futures.

here's a survey: what percentage of your life orientation is dedicated to living for the elusive present moment? how about focused on the past? what part of you is dedicated toward future plans?

go!

360 months

next month i will be passing a personal milestone. it will mark my 360th month living on this planet; also known as turning 30. i like the idea of 360 months though. it's sort of a metaphor about where one is at when they reach this moment: a full rotation into adulthood, preparing for the next stage in life.

it seems like that moment for me is all about starting over, beginning new things, and facing new challenges and dreams. i'm curious how my peers are feeling as they approach this 360 month mark. what are the things that excite you, or scare you? or do you think that this is just an arbitrary birthday, just as any other?

here's to taking our lives (and our dreams) seriously and embracing getting old.

function is the key

Ten years ago, a summer had been an eternity; now entire years were flying by in a blur interrupted only by deaths, marriages, and other catastrophes. There is no more commonplace observation than this, but to my knowledge no one has yet set out to study why children and adults experience the passing of time differently.

everything is changing all around me but i'm temporarily paralyzed, sitting in the proverbial waiting room. uncharacteristic indecision and uncertainty have taken over; along with a more familiar spontaneity. anything is possible: fear and excitement, confusion and ecstacy all dominate at once. i am both stuck and going everywhere. simultaneously moving and waiting; i am patient and in a fierce hurry. time is illusive and my strongest ally. sitting outside of town...

the best ideas survive

am i still dreaming? past tense armies of ghosts haunting places that are familiar but different. embarrasingly political in content, but also, not at all. the soundtrack is that midwest folk-punker, unknown outside of his college-town cafe and bar circuit: i'm gonna go out and fuck up my life tonight. sung with a fierce ambivalence. no siento. the fortunes of the frivolous.

but before you know it here i am again...tossing the couches of the rich into their indoor swimming pools, falling asleep just before sunrise. these pictures of you branded onto my vision even after closing my eyes. i never want to wake up.

it was a truly happy village where no one was over thirty years of age and where no one had died.

super movements and the ascent into adulthood

i've been thinking a lot about growing up lately. last night i hosted an event at the wooden shoe with billy upski wimsatt, author of bomb the suburbs and no more prisons. he's currently on tour with his newest book, please don't bomb the suburbs which is both a manifesto towards building a "super movement" and a self-reflective exploration--a decade and a half after writing his first book at the ripe age of 21.

during the event, billy challenged each of us to imagine the most powerful position we could envision ourselves being in, 5 or 10 years down the road, while still servicing the movement. it generated a really important and honest conversation about how indivuals can meaningfully affect social change, confronting and balancing the inevitable compromises of being part of the system we all live in, and thinking big.

as things started winding down, billy's friend adam mansbach walked in. an accomplished hip hop intellectual and author himself, i met adam 5 years ago in madison, wisconsin during an event on his book tour that i tabled at for rainbow bookstore cooperative. he lives in philly now and teaches at rutgers-camden. i told him that i have a friend visiting from madison this weekend who i haven't seen in 3 years. everything is connected.

looking back at that period of my life, which i can now delineate as my "mid-20's," helps me put into perspective where i've been and where i'm heading now as i approach my third decade of being alive. i had this idea last week about asking all my friends who are my age, almost 30, to write about this moment in their lives, how they feel about where they're at, and about their greatest dreams as they ascend into what our society defines as adulthood. from there, i want to take what they write and publish it as a zine. then i will throw a release party on my 30th birthday in april. right now it's just an idea, but we'll see!

first day of fall

yesterday was the last official day of summer. it was also the full moon. sarah sent me a text message about this, sort of as an equation; last day of summer+full moon=eek! endings and new beginnings aligning simultaneously. the uncertainty and magic of a new season that we call fall and sometimes autumn.

tyler called me last night while i was frying tofu. he just wanted to share a tip: at sunset the harvest moon would appear, full and larger than any other time in the next 2 decades. when that moment arrived it started raining lightly, the clouds obscuring this historic occurence. but it all made sense. friends came over to celebrate lv's triumphant 24 months of sobriety. endings, beginnings, and continuations.

the crutch and potential of endless possibility

right now, anything is possible. this is a good thing in some ways, but also pretty scary. when i wake up in the morning now i don't know what i am going to do. i know what i need to do--my list is growing longer every hour--it's that i don't have a space to get it all done. there are infinite spaces, but no space that is mine.

yesterday morning i decided that i would return to the library to do work after taking a 2 week break. i reached 43rd street on my bike and before i could start heading north from clark park another bicyclist passed me as the light turned green. this seemingly innocuous, insignificant event turned out to shape the rest of my day. with each red light i remained just behind my fellow bike-commuter and after 5 blocks of this i decided that i had enough. i took a sharp, desperate right at ludlow and continued to 40th street. this landed me at my favorite cafe with the most unfortunate of names. i would not be returning to the library afterall.

it was nice and quiet at the cafe when i arrived. i caught up with the barista about our favorite late-80's hardcore band, the one that she had the t-shirt of the week before. "what if the outfit of the barista affected your entire day?" she suggested as an idea for a sitcom. i thought it would make a better comicbook, even though neither of us are into comicbooks.

for the next 5 hours, i got work done. despite the heavy foot traffic on display through the cafe's sprawling windows, i concentrated and was productive. today i am back at the library, confident that i can carry that work ethic over. anything is possible.

september is an illusion

i can't emphasize enough how writing keeps me accountable--to my life goals, to my dreams. so basically, if i'm not writing then chances are pretty good that i'm not living in a way that's consistent with these things. or maybe it just means that i've been out of town. probably a little bit of both.

i enjoyed my late-summer adventure in massachusetts. it was so great to see emily and to go back down to the cape. so great to see all of my family too. we danced at silent disco in havard square thursday night, took a nap in the car and then hit the road. the weather had been dastardly all week, we were told, but became beautiful upon our arrival. we spent the weekend stretching the summer out as hard as we could. and then returning to philadelphia monday night, it's back to near 100 degrees. heatwave city. september is an illusion.

now i'm back to the grind, searching for my focus and motivation. as the restaurant school reopens from summer break i remind myself how grateful i am to not be working a wage job for someone else's profit. in order to sustain self-employment, i need to work harder and continue to take this work seriously. this is what i am doing.

working for myself: week two

Back at the library after a weekend break from work and a Friday that I wish I could re-do. Oh well, new beginnings! There is an urgency to being this week since I am going out of town Thursday. This means I need to get more work done over the next few days even though I am planning on bringing my computer on the busride to Boston.

I got sort of a boost yesterday as it appears that I have some money starting to trickle in. That began with a weekend of cat-sitting for a Wooden Shoe friend that was out of town, and then Wednesday I will be receiving my final paycheck from the Restaurant School. This money, although not much, will at least help me pay rent next week without having to dip into my savings account...yet.

It was nice to get a positive comment on something I wrote here from a couple weeks ago. I realized that my writing was probably more interesting then; when I was mentally struggling with larger life decisions instead of rambling on about all the work I need to catch up on or the mundane details of my personal income.

I'll try to keep it more interesting. And to write more too.

day 3/4

Yesterday I worked from home. The morning was productive, but as you may have noticed--I did not write. I think I would have got a lot more work done if I had left my apartment in the afternoon to work elsewhere. It was raining and I needed a break from the library, so I felt okay about it; it's just that things really degenerated around 1:00.

I updated Inga Muscio's page on the Aid & Abet website and then posted our August newsletter. It felt good to get so much done in the morning since the first couple days I had difficulties focusing until later in the day.

My life right now is basically a constant struggle to focus, to motivate and get shit done.

Ok, back to work...

day two

Maybe I just need some fresh air. My brain feels cloudy and unfocused. It's my second day at the central library and need to resdiscover the urgency and motivation of working independently. I have a sprawling to-do list, yet my mind wanders like a popcorn kernel sizzling in a hot pan. I'm going to take a short break from the library, venturing out into the summer heat for free food samples at the nearby natural grocery chain. When I return, things will be better. I will get work done.

working for myself: day one

After more than 11 months of being there, I quit my job last week; Friday was my last day. Today I begin my experiment with self-employment. The plan is to wake up each morning, Monday through Friday, and bike to Philadelphia's central library: my new office. It will be a challenge of self-motivation and determination. I've decided that the only way I will be able to succeed is by documenting the experience here. So everyday I will write how things are going, to keep me in check and to make this happen for real.

Today I have a lot of work to catch up on for Aid & Abet. I just started working with Inga Muscio, the author of Cunt and Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil. She has a new book coming out in November and I will be helping her manage speaking events around it. I need to finish writing up a description of her work to post on our website.

I'm also doing publicity for my friend Katy's band Trophy Wife. They have a new album and my job is to find folks to review it. There's a lot to be done!

In addition to all of that, I'm working on fall events for a bunch of other people include Heather Rogers, Tyrone Boucher, Kari Lydersen, and Cristy Road. I definitely have my work cut out for me. I'm excited to have the opportunity now to immerse myself in it without the distractions of my old job.

8.9.10: the beginning of the end

these past couple weeks (damn, the whole summer), i have been paralyzed by uncertainty. maybe it's less paralysis than hopelessness. either way, things started looking up today. the world seems a little clearer, more hopeful.

i was sick this past week with a strange combination of invincible sore throat and achey-fever, all in the dead of the summer. so strange. i called out sick from work thursday hoping to rest up to go back in friday for one last day before the weekend. but i felt even worse friday. that morning, i got up and drafted an email to the appropriate powers-that-be at my job. the email more or less said:

sorry i'm sick. also can't come in today. can you make sure to credit me with my remaining sick days? oh, and i have decided to try to work for myself so next friday will be my final day. thanks, matt

and now uncertainty has been replaced by a well-lit end of a tunnel. i'm not sick anymore and it was a little easier waking up and going to work today, knowing that this is it--the final week before i start taking my life into my own hands.

between self-empowerment and self-sabotage

my life is pretty strange right now. i wake up and go to work every morning. not the same job i've had since september, but it is the same employer. instead of serving hungry and tired people food and coffee, i sit around and fold things, tie things, and put things in bags over and over and over again. until there's nothing left to do and then i sit in a dank, damp basement until it's time to leave. my brain rots.

simultaneously, my to do list is through the roof. there's a lot of important work that needs to be done during the time i'm at this new job. but it just sits there untouched. fall tours, album releases, all on the horizon as i waste away my hours for barely above minimum wage.

this. cannot. last. much. longer.