lonely musings

I opened up the free daily that's on every street corner today and found an article that I have already written. Two years ago. And then again a few months ago. "Old news!" I wanted to shout. I also considered copying my clips of that very same article (only better, of course) and sending them to the woman I just sent my resume and some other clips to at that very same publication. I can write and research like these people. I can even break the story two years earlier. So, then, what do they have that I don't have? A few more years maybe? A few more dollars saved up in the bank from a past position? I will probably find, once I finally get my foot in the door, that I have a lot more to learn... but in the meantime this "rule" that you can't work at a metropolitan daily if you've never worked at a metropolitan daily before is just silly. And something like a catch-22.

Speaking of catch-22s, I have decided that if I must get an hourly job to pay the bills, I would rather work at a bookstore again than dirty my hands with whipped cream and espresso and grumpy customers who haven't yet had their morning coffee. There's a hip-looking, non-corporate bookstore about half a block from my new apartment... I might see if they're hiring. Then I can get serious about this "foot in the door" business.

I'm really enjoying this free time I have to read for pleasure again, and I'm devouring books like I did before I had to read for class. In light of this, I'm glad to be graduated. Because I have the time and the lack of stress to read books for pleasure, and I can read and analyze them in my head without having to compete with pretentious English majors for attention. Despite my general disdain for fellow English majors and sometimes English classes, I think if I were to do it over (college, that is), I would probably choose to be an English major again. I really like fiction. More than poli sci or psychology or sociology or biology or geology (all majors I briefly considered), I think it made sense to study something I enjoyed. Even if I didn't learn a bunch of equations or theorems or laws... what good does learning that technical stuff do, anyway, if I don't use it? It's quantitative versus qualitative, I guess, and in my everyday life I dwell more on things I make up, things I find and learn in fiction, things I read, than I do on why the sky is blue and how concrete is made and why buildings look the way they do. I was just walking around the Magnificent Mile (which was so magnificently crowded that I had to leave) -- probably the reason for all my city questions. But walking around, I cared more about where that guy with the frenzied look on his face was headed and how much begging of parents those little girls had to do to get American Girl dolls.

I don't think I articulated that very well. Something my English major essay-writing skills should have fixed. But it would have been articulated considerably worse had I written it in numbers and equations. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what my sister, a chemical engineering major, gets from college. Whether she will perceive it as useful knowledge in four years, or whether she will wish that she learned less quantitative stuff and thought and wrote a little more.