still working on a good title

Okay, so you know how there's ups and there's downs and all that that I've been saying?

This is an up. I mean damn, a very real up.

I came back from the ski trip without anything new on my plate or particularly to look forward to. In fact, other than my parents' visit there was literally nothing planned. That's a feeling I hate. And the bit with all those plans I thought I'd made falling through just seemed to reinforce the sense of doldrums, but that's gone. Because there are three things that are now going to happen that I did not expect to have happen and which are blowing my mind.

1. Going to a class on Austrian history at the Uni. This is unexpected because the class I had planned to take and which other TA's had said they had an interest in was cancelled. Apparently the professor was sick...about a month ago...which made them cancel the class for the whole semester. Not sure how that worked out, but it did. Well there's another one that I did manage to find that's just as good. Better, in fact, because it's in German. And there is at least one other TA who is interested in joining me at this class. In addition to learning about the Habsburgs, about whom I know humiliatingly little for someone who claims to be a European history expert/dork, it will also be a really good chance to meet and get to know some more Austrians. That is, from the appropriate generation and really from pretty much precisely the right age and temperament. Because college students=awesome and I kinda wish I still was one.
2. Going to Salsa dance classes and enjoying it. I went tonight to one by myself, which could have been awful. But somehow, inexplicably, I halfway picked up a girl as a dance partner (or she picked me up? Hard to say, if that's even really what happened). And I'm getting a bit of the jist--still have to get the whole stepping forward on count 1 thing down, but it'll get there. Plus, the TA I'd been planning on going to the classes with--whom I offended so much in Lienz--is still interested in the more expansive classes going on later involving all the main dances (in her words, "all we'll need to know ever for life").
3. Wait for it...wait for it...I'm joining the local lacrosse club team. That was unexpected. Like, really. All the other ones were unexpected because I'm a pessimist whose been going through a depression, but lacrosse? I really did not see that one coming. And it's happening. On Wednesday. And as far as I can tell, I'll be able to school them. I really did not realize how much I'd missed lacrosse until I realized I'd get to play again. Holy hell I'm excited. It's gonna be fuckin'awesome.

So I'm definitely on a high right now, a really good one, semi-non-rational, and invariably set to come down a bit. But it's less fragile than even the last one was (though it seemed really stable too), plus I think I'm more self-aware about this one. I'm giddy, in a not-entirely-sense-making kind of way, but I'm gonna go ahead and enjoy that until it stops. And then I'll enjoy the rational sense-making kind of happiness as long as it lasts too.
This is the plan. We'll see how it goes.

So I really don't like getting sick. And I am particularly unhappy about it when it prevents me from doing either of those things I was planning on doing this weekend. Because it's a bit on the lonely side to spend most of the weekend bedridden in an empty apartment (honestly, what do my housemates do that they're never in?)
In the mean time, there's a story from a local newspaper that I noticed a few weeks ago but hadn't gotten around to translating. Just kinda struck me how different the situation is here to in America. And of course, this is in the often socially conservative occasionally patriarchal country of Austria, where there's a cross in every classroom. So it really tells you something about how messed up parts of America can be. Not sure the translation's perfect, mostly because it doesn't really get the tone right, but here it is:

"Officer wants to continue career as woman
Captain in the army undergoes sex change. The Styrian [masculine form] wants to continue to work as a woman. Military and Defense Minister stand by him.
An Austrian Army captain is demonstrating great boldness these days. The man wants to undergo a sex change. And not only that, he would like to continue his service as the 45th woman in the officer corps.
How serious it is to the father of two is also demonstrated by the attitude of the Army itself. The “case” was declared a top priority. Not only do they wish to protect the identity of the Styrian, but Ute Axmann, spokesman for the Defense Ministry took on the matter personally. “It does not matter what anyone may think,” he says, “in the Austrian Army, comradeship is the chief concern. This very personal decision will be respected and our comrade will receive all the support imaginable. If all goes well, he will work for us as a soldier [feminine form] in a year and a half.” He added, “I am personally in awe of the courage of this officer.”"
--Kleine Zeitung, Thursday 7 February.

Thought somebody might be intrigued to read it. There's a bit more, but it's mostly about specifics of operations and horomone treatments.
Now why can't comradeship be ranked above social propriety in the American army?
Kinda makes you wonder about this whole image we have of the military as a place where people go to learn discipline and values. What they find in that situation, rather than morality, is the most pure form of conservatism possible. It has nothing to do with ethics but rather with the politics necessary to keep masses of people in line and seeing themselves as the backbone of society.

So I was wrong. About a few things. Actually, most of those things I had to look forward to were either false or vastly qualified. For instance, the dance classes were cancelled, and the soccer thing was the last time for the semester. It’ll start again sometime later in the month. And the cute Austrian girl? Not dates. Fortunately, I didn’t need to ask her. I found out instead during poker that she’s been dating someone else possibly the entire time we’ve been hanging out. As it happens, another American TA from the south with red hair and a beard. It was a little unsettling.
I look back at the things that I’ve just gone through, the nondates (there’s even been another pair of them), the time I seriously offended someone during the ski trip, the disappearance of most of the people and opportunities I thought were turning out, the collapse of my self-confidence, and I realize I should be depressed right now. Just from looking at it. It’s the funny thing about being depressed—which I was until, well, hours ago and probably will be again as soon as I go home from work—that you know you’re not a rational observer and you can’t tell if things should actually be depressing you. Well I can tell now that it makes a bit of sense. It’s not the life-changing catastrophes you usually hear about, but mine’s pathological, not incidental.
Interesting note: the BBC currently has a couple of stories online about how (1) anti-depressants don’t work and (2) depression is actually good for you. The second of which they support in part with a list of famous people (mostly artists of some sort) who have suffered from depression. They neglected to mention the suicides. I’d have to do the research to know how many, but given that they actually included Vincent Van Gogh in that list, I don’t think they were being picky for uplifting life stories. I’ve been upset at the BBC before, but I find it hard to describe how bad this is.
Well, things go up and down. I was down most of yesterday, didn’t think I had it in me to go to work, (didn’t think so today either, but that’s mainly because I) then went to the Stammtisch, which was at first a bit awkward and exacerbating, but ended up pretty cool when I had a fun conversation with the new TA in town. Plus I’ve got a fairly full weekend docket—clubbing tonight, which is new, and my housemate’s pop-punk show tomorrow, which is, also, rather new. Should be crazy. Might be fun. Like a lot.
There’s been a hell of a lot going on in my life, but I’ve been skiing for the past two weeks almost non-stop and had no internet connection except for a 4 hour period over the weekend in between, so I haven’t really been able to update much. Now I think I’ll start doing it a bit more.

So, it's been a while.

I haven't been not writing because life has been good. I haven't been not writing because life has been bad either. Or because life has been busy, or because life has been boring. The fact is, life has been all of those things over the past months. And I have no idea why I haven't been writing.

It could be that my time over here has slowly started actually becoming my life. And that even when I've had bad days and felt like shit (which has happened), I haven't been so emo in the sense of desperately needing to share my feelings with the world. Which, as those of you who read this in October will note, is an improvement. So I guess in some ways, exactly what I was afraid would happen has started to happen: I have drifted apart from the people I love. And even now, I don't want that to happen. I want to be a part of the world I knew and to fit back into it--and live with the people from it--and go back to my life the way it was before in some ways. But I think that will probably happen somewhat naturally. I think I'll email people who I think or know or someone tells me (hint, nudge, wink) are probably going to be living in Boston to try to figure out the whole living with thing sometime over the next month or so, but I figure the rest will take care of itself.
I mean, really, I haven't given it that much thought lately. Which, also, is an improvement.

Because what I have been doing is finally getting my shit together over here. It's been a slow, painful, erratic, and frankly somewhat accidental process (process may not even be the right word here as it implies working towards something. Drunken stumble may be more like it), so it's not like I've been putting LJ on hold while I figure my stuff out. It just happened.

( What happened. )

Something has happened. It didn't happen quickly, and it didn't happen easily. I don't think it even happened because of anything I did. But things are making me genuinely happy at this point, which hasn't been true in a long, long time. It hasn't been true since last May.

So I'll just say that I love you all and although I don't imagine things are going as well for most of you as they are for me right now (or at least by comparison with how they were going three weeks ago), I hope they're close.
So I'll see you all later. And do give me a ring on IM sometime. Or email.
Drake

K, so, it's been a week of impressive activity. As I said last time, I went to ( Prague. )

I've got plenty more to say, for instance about Budapest, which was also pretty amazing, and I'll go into that maybe tomorrow, but little doubt eventually.
I will say that having students not be prepared for a lesson in which they are supposed to take the lead is really not good. And having it be the fault of the main teacher (whom I am assisting) just makes me pissed.
And I find myself thinking about pretty intense stuff lately now that I have to, say, explain the death penalty. And the gap between hypothetical-fantastic and real-experiential is a real punch in the gut sometimes. But it's going pretty well in general. And I'm quite happy, and having the mice in my head chase each other is actually a pretty good thing these days, no matter how many times it means I play the movie "Monster" in my head over and over.
Anyway, time for dinner. This time tomorrow, I will probably have learned to cook something. Exciting.

Wow, okay...
It's difficult to convey how much this weekend did not suck. In any way. At all. It was amazing.
I went to Prague and had a blast and even afterwards the entire weekend was just generally awesome.
Really fucking happy right now. Really extremely fucking happy.
It's kind of a weird feeling.
More on Prague to come, but I need to calm down and let my thoughts digest.

I still do want to hear from everyone (and naturally, for every peak there is a trough. I think I've earned some interest towards this peak, though. Ain't mixed metaphors grand?). So write, email, IM, skype, do everything!

It's difficult to convey just how badly this coming weekend is likely to suck.
The plan had been that I would spend this weekend getting to know my new housemates by visiting their families with them (they were eager to show me real rural small-town Austria). But a miscommunication meant that they left before I got a chance to move in or therefore join them for the trip.
And now my plans for travel next weekend have all fallen through, one at a time. Each alternative fell apart.
So it seems very likely that I'll be spending another four days alone in a foreign country doing nothing and feeling like shit.
Huzzah.
Well the thing that should make it okay is that I now do have real internet access and so am on aim and skype a lot of the time. So please, please say hi.

I'm...an uncle.
...

( ...with apologies to Tim O’Brien )

And again with the roller-coaster.
Now at a high point, but still startled by how steep the shifts are. All of today was like I was on a precipice, not desperate to hold on, but aware that I was at the edge. And then about an hour ago came the news:
I have an apartment in Graz. And it’s the one I wanted.
Of course, you probably don’t know how big a deal (and change) that is, because I haven’t gone into detail. Briefly, I had a place lined up and told them I was almost certain I would move in at the end of the month, but the “almost” part made them think I didn’t really want it—lost in translation, you know? So one of them told me yesterday that the other two (there are three of them in the apartment) were planning to give the room to someone else, which led to me fighting off exasperation with some success while explaining the situation. And today was a frantic search for another place.
Until they called me and told me all was well and I had the apartment and could I move in next weekend?
Sweet.
So now I’m just biding the next half-hour before I go borrow my neighbor’s internet (and maybe this time try to make conversation? Wouldn’t that be something) to throw in the usb drive and paste this baby to the appropriate place.
Tomorrow I think I’ll call the French TA and ask if she and her friend want to have dinner or go out to a bar or something. They live in an even tinier town, so going into Graz: probably something they want to do.

Anyway, I also wrote something the other day but didn’t want to put it up after my grand emo-post—about which I would like to say thank you to everyone who responded and I’m sorry for cluttering up your friends page.
This is more in the style of memoir that I threw a few things in last year while I was in Germany, but it’s a bit different. And long. It came up because of something in class. I’m going to give it its own post, though, because that kind of makes more sense.

K. So, I need to move to Graz. Like, now.
Because something finally happened to me today that I was really hoping to avoid for another couple weeks: I asked myself if this was how I wanted to be spending my life--in a little town, playing video games and crap to pass the time.
And of course the answer is an emphatic no.
But I'm not thinking about that right now. Instead, I'm thinking about teaching. There was (gasp!) a good discussion in class today. They had heard of the civil war. They even knew (vaguely) what it was about, and when I asked if the totally simple explanation (abolition of slavery) was really what it was about, they pretty much all knew not to accept the easy way out. So I talked about that a bit, then about the civil rights movement, and Durham in general. And my sense of humor and cadence of speech clicked with them remarkably well. They laughed. When does that happen?
Course, in another class, I just basically gave a lecture about the American higher education sytem. And that wasn't boring. At all. I swear. Yes it was. So teaching, you know? It can really go either way.
Ah, something else happened that was a little bit funny--I showed them my yearbook and a few of the girls managed to find that page that your parents put in the back that usually has baby pictures and stuff. Yeah, that went well. Totally. I swear. No it did't.
And when I asked them to describe what they'd found, and to practice their english doing it, of course they wouldn't.
Oh well, you can't win 'em all.
But I miss everyone a lot. And I'm trying to find ways to email everyone, but sometimes I just don't know what to say. And those of you who have received emails or, hell, are reading this, know that I ramble. So a ramble without a clear focus is trouble, and I'm trying to avoid it. Once I've got IM (damn you mac-incompatible network! Damn you all to hell! Get your damn hands off me you damned dirty PC! Sorry, couldn't pass up the second reference.), it'll be easier. Then I can actually hold a conversation, one more baby step away from formality.
But I love hearing from everyone, by email, by livejournal, by whatever means possible.
So once again, I'll say I love everyone and call it a night.
You know, it's night here? Yeah. The earth is weird. Time is weird...and fucks with...oh whatever.

So, tomorrow I start in another school. I went there today and visited, and it was kinda nice. It still pisses me off that I can spend only a week at a time at any one school and then start the cycle over every three weeks. It's particularly bad because some of my hours rotate which class I'm in from week to week. Which is to say from 3 weeks to 3 weeks. So some I'll see only every 6 weeks. And it's possible some only every 9 weeks. Given that 9 weeks was a quarter of the schoolyear at my highschool (that's how it was often referred to), that's pretty bothersome.
Nonetheless, I think I'm getting the hang of this.
I told one of the teaching assistants that's also living at Kolpingheim about how I was going to move to Graz because Weiz is so small, and she kinda marvelled at it. She's from an actual honest-to-goodness village in Hungary, she says, and finds Weiz ("a city, any city") to be something of a novelty. And it is true that Graz is bigger than any city I've ever lived in. So it could be interesting. There's supposed to be 15-20,000 Uni students alone in the city. I mean, whoa. Like Boston or something.
Or Chapel Hill when it's not summer.
I did actually find a possible place in Graz, which is frickin awesome. The people I'd be moving in with are actually pretty cool. They like Americans--in fact their family tends to be a host family for the Fulbright assistents where they're from--and it was with them that I had that really interesting conversation I mentioned the other day. The only problem? The place is a LOT more than I wanted, and hence costs a lot more. Though oddly enough the discrepancy in the price is smaller than in what I'd be getting.
And the internet does work there.
Okay, fine, there is one more problem: that I can't really move in until the end of the month. I kinda really want to move in tomorrow.
Other good news: I will have at least every third Monday off, so long weekends fairly often. Which means travel. Budapest (Mad, you reading this?), here I come. And Prague. Germany might be a little far away. But Italy isn't. And if I play my cards right (as in get in Friday night and head out on a Tuesday overnight train), skiing is a really strong possibility. Like, often.
Oooh sweet.
Eisenerz, here I come--that's an honest-to-goodness village in the Alps, where one of the other assistents is stationed. Yeah, that's the right word for it. Because I've never felt like a member of an empire more than right now, heading out to the territory to spread the gospel of the English language, and maybe a bit of the American culture besides, then coming back home. I'm a little bothered by it.
But not as much as by having to use this computer down here in the lobby in order to have internet access. This is the first time it's been genuinely loud. But geez--they're actually picking up and dropping the chairs, watching TV on nearly full blast and practically shouting at each other above the din.
Which is also funny, because the din about fifteen minutes ago was CSI. Now that was funny. David Caruso sounds funny when you dub him into German.
K. So, that's the update. I hope it's at least interesting for you to read this stuff. Because I'm gonna keep writing it.
Beats the hell out of emo crap.

Okay. So Austria is in fact weird. I'll give you that. And I say this mainly because of the experience of going to the local bar in town where everyone goes and finding that it is in fact completely full of my students--high school students. Not the 18 year olds, even, but everyone. Yeah, the daughter of my supervising teacher--herself also my student--invited me out because she thought her brother (student at Uni Graz) would be there with his friends. Well, he wasn't, nor was pretty much anyone older than 18 with the exception (I'm pretty sure) of the bartender, but I nonetheless had a moderately interesting evening. We talked about the stuff that I wish the people I went to high school with would ever talk about: a little politics, a little cultural differences, and a lot of social commentary. They're good kids and pretty interesting. They are, however, of course, my students. So in the end (and in the morning when I was hung over after drinking ONE BEER--jeez it's been a long time), my final determination was that the night had rather been lacking in something important.
So I'm definitely moving to Graz, with a degree of need that isn't nearly that as moving to Boston when I get home, but an immediacy of need and a sense of possibility that far exceeds Boston. Which is to say that I absolutely cannot feel fulfilled spending a whole year in a place like Weiz--I mean I'd get something meaningful and powerful out of it. But these coming of age journeys are starting to wear on me. I don't want to lose another year while I figure stuff out. I want to have a blast while I figure stuff out. I just hope those aren't mutually exclusive.
Anyway, I promised you teaching high schoolers, ( and here it is, with a ramble besides. )

I had a good day today. That's something new lately. For a minute there, I was actually happy to be in Europe.

You know. I came to my senses.

The point is, culture shock and Heimweh are temporary. I never thought otherwise, but I've put that necessary chink in the wall of difficulty that I'm going to widen over the course of the year into a full-scale breach and then walk through and see how green the grass is around here.
Yeah, the grass is actually really green--it's Austria--but that makes a pretty good metaphor, because when I'm tired or sad or (and here's the funny one) when the sun is out, I kind of get tunnel vision. Like, literally. And figuratively, too. I sometimes feel oblivious to everything except what I'm focusing on, which means the incredible beauty of this beautiful small town nestled in between some mountains in the Austrian countryside, which I know is there and can talk about in detail, still escapes me. I mean, I'm looking right at it, and I know what it looks like, but I still can't SEE it.

But that's just a matter of time.
I'm about to finish season one of Buffy for the second time this week. That's how I feel like I'm around friends. But when it ends, it's pretty hard on me. Plus watching season one is much akin to reflecting on one's past (and the finale, with her knowing she's going to die actually involves her looking over photo albums and reflecting herself), which is something that is incredibly bittersweet right now. It always has been, but the melancholy of 'God, we were kids' is pretty fierce in a situation where I feel like 'we' will not develop much beyond that. I mean, we still are kids. And I want to stay that way for now. At least until I've caught up to all of you again and then we can do the whole living thing.
Which gets me thinking kinda pseudo-intellectually about the contrast between something like Buffy and something like the Simpsons (which has been on--in German--every night at the boarding house where I'm staying) which is purely episodic, involves no real progress or development, or at least any that is there is this quantum shift ('there was a powerful experience and now my character is permanently changed from x to y'). Because we live in a constant state of flux. You can't talk easily about a quintessential time except in retrospect--when you misrepresent it in order to say something like that. But I'm a history guy, which makes that statement particularly troubling...
Did I just have a tangent? Am I tangenting? Wow, I am feeling better.
But write to me anyway! As I've been trying to tell the people that I have managed to get emails to, everyone and their dog should write to me, because I'd like to think that I'm friends enough with all the Alpha Delts, all the OAers, all the Pirate Hallers, all the Fauver-mates and visitors, and all the Questies, that I can maintain conversations with them on a regular basis. But I don't want to presume and write to someone who I don't know is a 'close friend' even though I desperately want to hear from them.
And maybe I would write to just about everyone I know, if only I had an internet connection. Idiots around here don't do macs, so my laptop, my beloved amazing laptop isn't apparently compatible with the network at the boarding house.

Anyway, in the interest of not clogging up your friends page, which I hope you're reading, I'll not go into the weirdness that is teaching Austrian high-schoolers. Until next time. A sneak preview though: the weird part is that they're high-schoolers, not Austrians.

So I have arrived in Weiz.
And oh man is it exactly how I thought it would be, which is to say the following: beautiful, at times welcoming and inaccessible, differently convenient (and inconvenient), small but not tiny, and intensely lonely.
That last one's me, not Weiz. Because while the city has lots to do and a fair number of people in it, there is no one my age (seriously, 23-year-olds you could probably count on one hand in this town) and damn do I miss my friends.
That said, I'm here, I planned to come here, I expected it to be like this, and I'm going to make of it exactly what I planned. Just as soon as I'm 100% clear on what that is.
Now, in the mean time, missing my friends as I do (is this what all my entries turn into? Yeah, pretty much. Sorry.), hearing from any and all of you would be tremendously helpful. The prisoner needs visits. You know, in his really beautiful, not-actually confining prison in the middle of Europe, where he's getting paid more than he should. But the point is, prison dammit. Yes, I'm trapped here.
Well, truth be told, the isolation hurts a particular lot coming from the situation at Wes where I felt close to people. So don't feed into my paranoia that I can't be close to you people again! Write me!
I should have regular internet access by tomorrow, so don't be surprised if you get an IM or skype message from me in the late morning or early afternoon--cuz that's evening and night-time here.
And by all means, don't just email me, but IM and skype me.

So, here's the plan.
I have to be in Austria on September 21. What I'd like to do is, since I'm presumably going to be flying out of New York anyway, to spend a week or more up with the people I never meant to leave, which is to say squatting in the Alpha Delt attic a couple of days so I can spend some time with the undergrads (if they'll have me), spend a while in Boston (and of course this one really depends on people wanting me there) with the alum friends I would rather have spent the summer with (if, again, they'll have me), and spend at least a couple of days with something of a long-lost close friend who'll be in NYC for the last couple of days before I head out. I don't mean to presume, but dammit I wanna see my friends again.

So the short of it is, if you're up north in Middletown, NYC or Boston around September 8-21 and wouldn't mind playing host for a couple of days to a wayward Wes alum on his way to a European adventure, let me know.

Well, things are going pretty decently for me these days. I've been doing a decent job walking the knife-edge over the potential depression that I was afraid would be in store for me this summer. It's going to be a long year. Most of my time in Germany I couldn't wait for it to be over because of all the time I was losing away from my friends. And now, in some ways it feels even more urgent, because I didn't intend to be separated in the way most people are after college. I didn't want to leave my friends and go off and do my own thing. Quite explicitly not. Thus, part of me still wishes that I weren't going to Austria, but instead that I had spent my ample free time last semester (well, the part before the end there, back when I had free time) looking for a place to live in Boston, or trying (all very subtly of course--nothing if not Southern) to invite myself into an existing group of people planning on living together over there. Because one way or another, I'm coming back. The difference is that after a semester abroad everyone knows it and expects it and thinks of you accordingly. After this, I'm just praying that I won't have drifted apart from the people I love.
Of course, much of that was somewhat alleviated by the well-wishes I got from so many people two days ago. I wanted to thank everyone for that. A birthday just ain't any fun without friends. So thanks again.
In the mean time, if anyone has suggestions on how to find a place to live for a year in a small town on another continent, I'm all ears.
Yeah.
Love to all.

So I'm entertaining thoughts of finding ploys to convince Wesleyan I didn't actually graduate and need to spend another year there. And, you know, finding ploys to pay for it. 'Cuz it's so cheap to go there and all. Right.
But in all honesty, I'm pretty lost right now. I could say all the usual things. You know, the angsty melodramatic things about how depressed I am right now, because I am. And I feel them, but I won't say them because that's not productive. Point is, I better not fucking be done with the life and the friends I had up there. There's few things these days for me that can create the sort of spontaneous rush of energy that result from that thought. And stuff like it.
In any case, I managed to take care of the stuff I needed to to get an Austrian residency permit. Although they neglected to tell me that I'd need to fill out a physical examination form so now the application will be 10 days late. And trust me, I don't need to send anything else late. Because, you know, Pünktlichkeit and all. Not my strong suit, but it needs to start being.
Especially if I'm going to make the train in the morning over there. Which leaves Graz at something like 6:30 if I want to make it to Weiz by the time the schoolday starts. So I'll keep trying to find a place to live in Weiz proper, despite it meaning I will be spending about a year in honestly the middle of fucking nowhere and you know how much I need people in order to feel anything. Which is why this damn room is starting to feel like a prison. So I'll have a year of kinda solitary sabbatical to look forward to before moving to Boston and trying to join the real world.
Which could be great, you know, catch up on reading, maybe write that damn story...those damn stories...all several of them. Or which, alternatively, could suck.
Could go either way.
In terms of my life now, still watching TV on DVD's (just finished Angel all the way through--I'm'onn' fuckin' kill Joss Whedon) and doing research for a journalist, though not superfantastically well, mostly because I'm depressed. I shouldn't even be writing this: should be doing research, but hey, a little compulsion's never failed to stop me from doing what I would otherwise.
Still waiting to hear back from certain relevant parties about visits and the like. Looks like the Midwest trip may be out. Too bad.
And still hoping that I'll be able to find a roommate in a year in the Wesleyan alum community in Boston. That'd be pretty nice. But that's a ways down the road. Just praying I don't recede in my distance over the next year and I'll be able to find a place in my old life again.
And in the mean time I am just treading water.

So I think I figured out why I spend so much time these days watching TV shows all the way through. It's not like I didn't do it when I was up at school, but it's taken on a different character now. Then it was something to do that required no effort. Now it's like seeing old friends. It's pretty surprising just how affecting it is, say, when watching Angel to see odd characters or references from Buffy show up. Like once when I saw Alyson Hannigan's name in the opening credits and nearly fell out of my chair. Well, some of that may be because it's, you know, Willow, but the point remains.
Which makes me wonder if that's why I am so gung-ho about certain things that are at this point habits, or a routine: because it's familiar, and close, and because I desperately need to have something like that now. I mean, I don't have friends here. Like actually, seriously, there's no one I can call around here to do something with. There's no one I know that I want to spend any time with. Everyone else I know had, like, a small group of friends or something in high school they could go back home and hang out with. I don't have that. I don't have anything like that. The closest thing I have to that would be the people my sister has introduced me to, interesting, cool people around here, but it feels far too much like my family playing matchmaker for me and that's an utterly disgusting feeling to me. Occasionally someone at Wes would mention their friends at home and it would strike me just how much I'd missed out on, but most summers I've had something else better to do than to deal with the absence of friends. But not this summer: and a long summer at that. Now this room, this house, feels like a cell, a cloister that I really don't know any way out of. And the closest thing I've got to contact with people I love is typing into a box that doesn't really respond, or watching DVD's of familiar TV shows.
And that's why it's so important to me to head up north when people are ready for me. I can't sit in exile around here all summer. And much as I don't like the idea of my relationships with people being reduced to "visits" and "keeping in touch"--fuck, I HATE it--that's about the best I can hope for for the next year, so I'll just leap at those opportunities.
If someone had asked me before a couple hours ago if I was in a depression I would have laughed and asked them where they were coming from with that. If I had been asked three weeks ago whether I expected to be in one around now I would have said undoubtedly yes. And now, in this moment, typing into this box, reduced to a more vegetative than active life-form, I would have to say that yes, I'm on my way. So I know what's coming. God that sucks. Because it's not the sort of thing that makes me rage against some unseen schmurz--though I want to with the sort of quiet desperation that Pink Floyd sings about--it's not the sort of problem that you can run a sword through. It's a non-manifest non-crisis that sucks, but feels so dull and banal as not even to warrant harsh words. That's what depression is for me right now. Being stuck in some slime that feels like sickness and death. Feels like aloneness, but doesn't make you cry except occasionally.
God I hate this shit.
But in a subtle, non-angry way.
In other news, I need to go to more music and stuff if I'm going to be inspired enough to write that damn story I've been working on off-and-on for the last three years. Only in going out and experiencing artistic creation am I energized/shamed to have the will to work on my own.
And God I need make something of my thoughts. Of me.

Hey everyone.
Not a lot to say. But I figured I needed to restart this thing sooner or later.
My main concerns right now are finding a place to live in Austria and somehow becoming competent as a teacher. That'll take some doing. Any ideas? I didn't think so.
But my secondary concern, which is frankly of more importance to me personally if not professionally (did I just use that word?) is meeting up with everyone I can. I sent out a group email a while back, got some responses, and now I guess the time is coming up to start actually planning visits. I know I want to hit up New York, and probably Boston if possible. Don't know who's going to be there when though. Well, in either place. My plan to go just before flying out to Austria doesn't seem very likely, though, because I don't need to be in Austria until the end of September, though I could see myself getting out there early and spending some time around. Really it depends on when people are free...Thoughts?
Maybe livejournal isn't the best sounding board, but it's worth a shot.
Of course, everyone is very much invited come visit me at any time. I suppose I already mentioned that in emails, but I repeat myself.
It's worth it to be that guy if it keeps me from losing everyone.