a note from the author

In large part, I try to make this blog something people want to read. And that's by design. Who wants to invest time reading something uninteresting and humorless? I sure as hell don't. But more than embedded youtube videos, hyperlinks, and relentless satire, this simple square of cyberspace follows the thoughts and actions of an average person.

An average person has tasks, expectations, plans, inadequacies, hopes, dreams, and deficiencies. An average person eats, sleeps, loves, laughs, and occasionally locks their keys in the apartment.
An average person waxes, works, and wanes throughout seventy-something years of lucidity book-ended by eternal nothingness.

But there's a problem with all of this: I don't want to be average. I never, ever have. My first grade classroom had these interconnectable plastic bears you could join to form chains. Guess whose had to be the longest. In third grade I insisted upon working my tail off so I could move on to the fourth grade math book a year early. I took up acting during my early teenage years and went on film and television auditions to try and become somehow notable. In college, I started off as a music and journalism major but changed to business because investment banking provided exceptional prestige and income. It had nothing to do with interest. Who knows, maybe my transatlantic foray for grad school was motivated by the same factor...international experience is viewed as exotic and uncommon in culturally ignorant America.

Right now, I'm honestly in the throws of a quarter-life crisis. I'm unable to find the motivation to do any school work because it all seems so theoretical and impractical. I don't feel like learning how to map bond payments into principal components is worthwhile, and I feel like the only value at risk is my happiness. My GPA is suffering because of it, so much so that I learned today I likely won't be making it to New Zealand. I need a 7 to go abroad and will probably wind up with a 6.75. I got my grade back on a paper and scored the class average in a class full of non-native English speakers. This highlights another dissatisfaction I have with my current educational choice: I don't necessary feel like effort and input, when applied, correlate with success.

There are other compounding variables I'll discuss ambiguously. I invested a weekend and a plane ticket discovering that someone I thought may be truly exceptional is, in fact, flawed. Furthermore, a current cornerstone in my support system crumbled due to the weight of itself, and that's just tragic. There is a mutually advantageous solution but it's as complicated as neurosurgery and trying to operate would likely kill the patient. It's an awful paradox.

Most of the posts here are supposed to be things people would want to read. This was just something I wanted to write, something I needed to express. I feel aimless, passionless, and mired in mirthless mediocrity. I have no idea what to do with my life, no idea where I want to spend it or with whom. But I do want it to be extraordinary. I don't want to work a 9-5 job with a suburban house, a wife, a cat, a dog, and 2.4 kids. I just know I want to be happy, and I know that right now, I'm not.