Bored now.

For the first time in ten years, I'm completely unemployed. No UChicago, no AF temp job. It's been about a week. I'm miserable. I'm beginning to think I'm the type of person who can become lost without structure and purpose, but I can't be sure, since this has never happened to me. In general, my day to day activities and discipline haven't changed much since my previous arrangement of having two work-at-home jobs has finished, but the feeling is markedly different.

My first order of business during my last week with The University of Chicago was to secure a volunteer arrangement, something that could consistently get me out of the apartment and around the city I haven't yet begun to explore. I sent an email to Educational Video Center, a place a lot like a job I had back in 2007-08, and got a call the same day. Monday through Thursday, 2-5, I am a teaching assistant for two classes teaching social justice documentary filmmaking to high school/alternative school students. So that's something. (Perhaps more on this in another post.)

Other than that, my existence consists of applying to at least one job a day (though that drive has been waning), and interminably working on my production reel (UGH), so I can finally apply to all of those jobs in my queue that require one. I've also been teaching myself Adobe After Effects through online tutorials — and trying use it to come up with some kind of graphic identity for said reel. I usually end a variably productive morning with some Buffy or Angel, though I'm beginning to tire of it lately.

I'm beginning to tire of everything lately. As you can see, it's not for lack of things to do. As I've written here before, I can be by myself for hours and come up with an endless list of tasks I should take on. But for all of the busyness I put myself up to, lately, I still find myself thinking the word "bored" — a word and concept I loathe — and sometimes even saying it aloud. I don't believe one can be bored as long as there are things to take care of and thoughts to think and even people around (I guess). But I'm increasingly sad and bored and lethargic, and the false sense of discipline and purpose I give myself just isn't cutting it.

Now, if you know me, you are probably a bit surprised that I didn't plan for this, at least in part. But that's part of the problem: I did. I knew I might be unemployed for some period of time, but I thought I would be driven to give some attention to some of the priorities that had been back-burner'd over the past year. When I left Chicago in July, I did so with a vision of my temporarily-freelance existence, a picture that included cutting a feature-length documentary (pro-bono) for my friend DS and staying financially solvent through a few odd freelance editing jobs here and there through JS. Alas, DS reneged on the documentary after pressure from his production company — months of my work for nothing; I won't even be in the credits. And JS, well...that was probably doomed to begin with. I haven't heard from him in quite a while.

While I don't directly blame those guys for my current situation (wouldn't it have been great if I'd found a job here in NYC back in April?), and while I'm certainly grateful to have been able to live in this new, expensive city for three months now without much worry, I now find myself without any of the preplanned activities I'd banked on and been assured of just three months before, not to mention without the invaluable resume fodder I need to stand out in this insanely competitive market. I don't even want to broach the topic of money. It's just a disappointing situation, and I'm feeling helpless.

Unfortunately, the timing of my complete unemployment has come right as SM's work is ramping up. He has five classes, night lectures, reporting/field work, and hours of reading and writing assignments. By the time we're both home (thank God I'm out and about at least 3 hours of the day so I can say I get back from somewhere), I'm starving for connection, while he is stressing about school. I know I wrote here that I could go for days without talking to anyone, and I still think it currently holds true, but I don't think I realized how much purpose there is in working, even remotely, and resting assured that you will connect with at least someone, and that your work is meaningful to at least someone. Without that component, my world has shrunk that much more.

I'm volunteering at EVC in a program that isn't usually supported by others outside of the main teacher, so outside of helping students (who sometimes mistake me for one of them anyway) with camera work and learning FCP, I often feel superfluous. My friends here in NYC, with the exception of a few graciously involving people, all have their own lives and social groups, and they're often too busy or forgetful of my now-consistent presence to hang out. The perceptions of New York as an isolating place are starting to resonate. I have almost zero desire to get out and meet new people, I just miss having friends I could contact to hang out whenever, or friends with whom I'm comfortable enough to be some type of reliable social group. I remember feeling this way in 2009, after several friends of mine and SM's had left Chicago, and we didn't feel that bond with many people left in the city, so I know it's only a matter of time before that gets better. But feeling out of step with the busy, working world and with SM in school (and meeting new people there), it's hard to look very far ahead. I just hope I'm able to land a job before my money and sanity wear out.

Tribute

SM and I decided this weekend that if we ever get a dog, we will name it Danko. I think if we ever get a second dog (if you know me, you know that chances of this are slim), I'd definitely consider naming it Levon. None of our pets will ever be named Robbie.

Obligatory Tree of Life Post

I'm going to try to make this free of spoilers. I don't think it's possible to spoil this movie, though. Just don't walk out after the first 45 minutes.

Okay, so I saw The Tree of Life this past Tuesday. Right off the bat, I just have to say that the cinemotagraphy is amazing. It looks specacular. The movie itself is the culmination of Mallick's films. Everything was there: religion, man vs. the universe, voiceover, hands running through wheat, good vs. evil, shots of the sun, shots looking up at the trees. And it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

But my thoughts on it haven't yet settled. At first, I thought that the parts about the dawn of the universe didn't mesh well or have a coherent message with the parts centering around Jack's family. But as I've had some distance from it, it is clearly one of the many contrasting pairs Mallick sets up in the film.
The very personal and subjective pain of losing a close family member, contrasted with the expanse of the universe
Father vs. Mother
Grace vs. Nature
Future vs. Present
Past vs. Present
Preparing for and sculpting the future, as opposed to letting things come, letting things happen
Evil vs. Good
The meting out of love (when deemed appropriate) vs. unconditional and ever-present love
Brother vs. brother

These were just a few of the themes that I felt and picked up on while watching the film. There were two specific impressions that have really resonated with me, though.

First, when it came to the Waco, TX scenes, so much reminded me of my own family and my own childhood. I am the eldest child, and I, too, felt a strange relationship to my younger siblings, both a strong love for and a certain jealousy of their presence. We were also physically disciplined (something I have no problem with), but later in my parents' marriage my dad became more abusive (something I have a huge problem with); my mom was also silently indignant about this, as Jack's mother was, but couldn't do much to stop it. Then there were some religious aspects of the film that really hit home. All of those questions were ones I had asked of God myself in some intensely personal, trying, and scary times. There is fear and awe and doubt mixed up in those moments, just as they were expertly portrayed in the movie.

The second thought that I just can't shake about this film is the similarities between it and East of Eden by John Steinbeck, one of my favorite books. East of Eden is just as beautiful, if not more so, and the juxtapositions between the beauty and wide open space of the west with the author's detailed family histories and personal memories recall Mallick's struggle to comprehend humanity and existence. Both works also allude to biblical references throughout. The book also centers around the relationships between brothers (there are at least three sets of siblings in the book, two of which feature brothers competing for love and acceptance), just as The Tree of Life spends time showing differences between the two brothers and the desire to be "good."

The book is a bit more concerned with fate and intertwining stories, as a book is so well-suited to do, but both pieces end (explicitly or implicitly) with what I interpreted as a choice. Both writers asked "why him?" with a certain amount of guilt, and I think Steinbeck provided not an answer but a choice -- an obligation -- to keep going. Although my fellow moviegoers, SM and DS, disagreed with me about the ending of the film, I saw it as a sign of freedom from the burden of grief, permission to keep going: Timshel, "thou mayest." He is the only one left to do something with his life, and he has the permission, he should do so without guilt.

These are just some reactions that have been going through my head in the past 4 days. I think I need to see the film again to really hammer down whether the questions Mallick posed were answered or if they need answers at all. DS was pretty adamant that this was one of the finest films he'd ever seen, and that there was no conclusion to be drawn from the impressionistic portrait. Maybe it's just my desire for outlines and closure, but I think there's more to this than not being able to fully interpret it, and I think we're allowed to judge the piece if it doesn't end up coalescing into anything substantial. I'll let you know if I figure anything else out.

The Social Network [Spoiler Alert]

By now I think it's apparent that I view the inability to stop thinking about it as one of the markers of a good movie. The Social Network is, for better or worse, the latest addition to my list of hearty cinematic fare.

One of the things I find most striking about the film is not necessarily the plot, but all of the questions the making of this film brings up: where is the line between fiction and reality? What are the facts on which this story is based, and where do they align with the plot points of the film?

As far as the plot of the film goes, one of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's best moments of construction and a testament to Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall's' editing was the juxtaposition of the two key lawsuits: one from a group who believes Zuckerberg stole their idea, and another from his "only" friend who was shut out of the company. There's the business side of things, and there's the personal side of things. The business side is pretty clean cut, and it's made clear in the film that the group suing him doesn't really have true case, but it's viable enough to question how a jury would react, and so they settle. The personal side of anything is going to be a lot more complicated, and this case is no different. Digging up the details of the case is painful for both friends, and more evidence turns up of their friendship (and Zuckerberg's supposed awkwardness) than of a reason why Zuckerberg did what he did. The question is actually never answered: it remains an inexplicable open wound. Sorkin parallels these two stories to highlight the corresponding sides of Facebook: the money and the business and the facts are cleaner cut (and lame by comparison) than any of the strange new bonds people maintain on the website.

Sorkin's black and white view of the social platform is well-executed, but certainly cause for concern. It's clear that he doesn't know anything about social media, and as you can read in countless places, facts aren't his chief concern either. It was thus that much more interesting to compare and contrast the film with the timely profile of Zuckerberg featured in the New Yorker. My first impression was that, from the author's description, Eisenberg nailed Zuckerberg's personality -- a feat, considering the star of the unauthorized picture has most likely never had the chance to meet his private, introverted, and self-proclaimed awkward non-fictional counterpart. Unlike some dimwits out there likely to take the story as fact and exposé, I think I have the sense to see a film about any origin story as sensationalized at the least, but reading the article brought Facebook's founder into the mix as well. After completing the piece, I had to admit there was more to this than getting a character's quirks down or at least exaggerating them to the perfect degree on screen. I started thinking about how it would feel to have a movie made about me: of course it would frustrate me that a) it existed in the first place, b) any grain of truth in it was most certainly going to be exaggerated, and that c) it would be possibly sensitive parts of my life portrayed onscreen by people who have no idea who I really am. But perhaps most of all, it would bother me that people out there would actually believe it. They wouldn't think twice. I really found myself pulling for Zuckerberg in all this, not necessarily because of the truthfulness of the facts or the level of acting, but because he's a guy who did some great things and some not so great things, just like everybody else, and we should just leave him alone.

One fleeting moment of the film SM and I spent a lot of time talking about was Rashida Jones' lawyerly explanation (if caught, for the benefit of the viewer, moreso than for Zuckerberg) that settling doesn't imply guilt, rather it admits defeat in the face of inescapable perception of guilt. All the prosecution has to do is convince the jury that theft was merely possible. He could have been thinking it, so he could be guilty. That's all it takes. As much as I might think I would react differently to any of the situations Zuckerberg faced, this was what it came down to: sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, people are going to extrapolate what they wish and judge you accordingly. I saw it as kind of concession by Sorkin for Zuckerberg, tucked away among the drama and the sometimes-harsh characterizations.

Is the goal of a film based on reality to tap into that reality for answers, for truth? Or do we watch these films as a mirror into the distant past, just to reaffirm that it happened, like clicking through a Facebook photo album? After watching this film, I would hope that Sorkin and Fincher were going for the latter. The former is just too fraught with incomplete truths and funhouse-reflected moments in history to do any justice to a real investigation. Maybe it's just too soon, or too much altogether. I thought the same of Oliver Stone's W: why am I watching this? What's the point of this exercise? He was a young guy who started a game-changing website, or a president who made some questionable choices...so what?

Overall, I think the movie was well-crafted, but ultimately a hollow experience. I found thinking of Facebook outside of Facebook for a while was the interesting exercise, regardless of the contents of the film. While waxing philosophical about the "power of social networking" is annoying to me, I do know that I joined the website before I was even a first year, in the summer of 2004. I knew that University of Chicago was the second tier of schools added after the Ivy Leagues, but I had never put that timing into perspective: Zuckerberg rolled out Thefacebook.com in February of 2004. When he was 19 years old. 19. The rate of growth of his consumer base was absolutely ridiculous, and he didn't have to advertise. It is word of mouth and desire to be involved that continues to drive the whole beast. That is pretty powerful, whether you like the (portrayal of the) guy or not. And I think what really sells him to me, though, is that he's not in it for the money. He enjoys building things, like so many of the other unknown developers and hackers in Silicon Valley, and he will continue to build it out until he moves on to something else, if ever. I can respect that from afar without having to know the ins and outs of his personal life, Sorkinized or no. I just hope this dramatization of him and the founding doesn't get in the way of other people doing so as well.

Further reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/media/04portrayal.html?th&emc=th
http://www.slate.com/id/2269250/

The New 'Hood

It's high time for a post about our new apartment. On or around July 1, SM and I moved into a new apartment in Chicago's North Center neighborhood. It's pretty awesome. The surrounding area is quiet, but has a bunch of cool restaurants and bars and cultural activities. We're pretty much just as far west as we were before, but we are 12 big blocks north. Also, we're now a 5 minute walk from the Brown Line at Irving Park, which is a huge improvement from the 20 minute walk we had before. I don't mind walking of course--the nice walks around the neighborhood was one of the things that attracted us to this spot--but when it comes to getting to work in a timely fashion, a 5 minute walk can make all the difference.

I've explained it this way: at our old place, if I was ready to leave the house 8am, my choices were to wait for the bus and get to the train station (to wait however long for a train) in 5 minutes or walk to the train station in 20 minutes. If I use CTA Bus Tracker to discover that there's a bus in 10 minutes, it saves me 5 minutes, but I'm still starting my commute at 8:10 instead of 8am. These days, I can leave whenever I want, and 5 minutes later, I'm at the train station on my own two feet, and there's usually a train (and a seat!) about every 5 minutes during rush hour. I'm getting to work consistently in an hour or a little less, instead of an hour one day, an hour and 10, 20 minutes the next.

If I'm going some place other than work, the CTA options are still plentiful. There's the Brown Line to the loop (or the Brown Line to the Red Line to 95th), the Ashland bus south but staying west, the Lincoln bus to the west of us going southeast, the Clark bus to the east of us going southeast, the Damen bus to the west of us running north and south, and the Irving Park bus down the block going east and west. Each of these options is within a 10 minute walk from our door. It's transit heaven!

Inside the apartment, it's absolutely beautiful. The building was built in 1931, and it's all brick on the outside, old wood on the inside (dark wood door with glass panes in the dining room, old style windows). It's large, with a sizable living room and bedroom, 2 closets, a hall way, a bathroom, a linen closet, and a kitchen with a separate dining room area. There are lots of built in cabinets and, as I've implied, tons of storage place, which was something we were adamant about on our search. There is also a dishwasher and a microwave above the stove. There is free radiator heat, which is pretty cool, because that's how I grew up. It's very much a practical and awesome place.

Another thing I like about our apartment is just the new perks of living alone. Alright, so I'm living with S, but he's no roommate or anything. We even have similar cleanliness and organizational habits and design desires, so most roommate differences don't even count. Anyway, there's so much you can do when you live alone. All the space is yours. All the food is yours. You don't have to move anything you don't want to. The TV is always yours. The living room is always yours. You can go into another room whenever you want. If so inclined, you can do any business you want in the bathroom with the door open.

But my #1, most favorite perk of living alone is that you can wear as little as you want at all times. (Gross Out Alert) You can walk around completely naked. It is in my top 3 most liberated feelings. One of the first things I do when I get home from work is take off my pants. It's awesome. And some days, you just need to strip down. It's your right; it's your place. If you don't already, I highly suggest getting your own place for that reason alone.

As my good friend OBM once said, "nudity and happiness go hand in hand in living in one's own place." If you don't like where you live or you're feeling down in a rut, I recommend shedding some of that clothing and taking a tour in your birthday suit. Go ahead. DO it. Take a deep breath and feel renewed. There's really nothing like it.

Say Shhh...

SM and I went back to Minneapolis for my brother's high school graduation last Saturday through Tuesday. After this weekend being so long what with work all day Saturday and everything, it seems like it was already so long ago, but I figure it's not too late to officially attempt to set down in writing a few reasons why I think Minneapolis is the greatest and a few other thoughts I have about the town.

I love the scale of Minneapolis. It's a lot smaller than Chicago, but it's still packed with a lot to do. Sometimes, I feel like a giant among the buildings downtown, but it's a lot more manageable, and its features feel functional and efficient, nothing more or nothing less than is needed. The layout is clean and clear. Also, skyways are amazing.

Public transit has gotten a lot better, and the plans for the newest leg of the Light Rail are in the works. One of the things I truly appreciate is something that evolves organically, and I think that MetroTransit under R.T. Rybak's guidance has done just that for the public transportation of Minneapolis. Instead of sprawling until it's too late to put together a working system, the city has taken the time to figure out what it needs and really promote it from a heartfelt place. The Light Rail is a prime example, as is the fact that downtown they already have the upcoming buses on display at bus stop kiosks, something Chicago has only recently caught on to. Also, speaking of transit, the bike system is amazing. This year it's been officially named the most bike friendly city, but it's been in the top tier in past years as well.

It's a great blend of city and nature. I never went crazy being in the city for long stretches because I could drive for less than 40 minutes and hit farmland or large estates. Even before that, there are just trees everywhere, in all neighborhoods, and the plethora of lakes creates mini oases out of many areas of the city without locking people in to super-defined neighborhoods. This is something I really treasure, because, while Chicago prides itself on its neighborhoods with distinct personalities, unique patches within the larger quilt, I am constantly frustrated with just how true that is. Unless one makes the effort to look at that larger framework, one can easily get caught up with the intricate patterns of one's own square. There are so many native Chicagoans (friends and family included) who don't know anything outside of their own neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are set up to be self-sufficient and can be quite isolating unless one's goal is to delve into a new place for the sake of seeing how it fits into the rest of the city. Unfortunately, that means the people who get the most out of this quilted metropolis are the outsiders who care to look.

One more thing I really love about Minneapolis is that it's free to live outside of the shadow of other cities. While Chicago is too busy going blow for blow with New York, there's enough Minnesota/Minneapolis confidence in creating its own thing. Who cares about New York vs. Chicago style pizza? Both are good, so don't waste time with imitations: just make a good pizza and forget the label. We don't need to stack ourselves up against other places when it comes to the arts either. Sure, we know that New York is a big place with big museums and theaters, but we've got our own theaters and museums and a deeply rooted appreciation of the arts that has garnered national attention without an unnecessary complex.

I could go on and on about the smaller and more personal reasons I love Minneapolis (it would probably be a list of names and places), but that would just be gushing, and it would be beside my point of pointing out Minneapolis's strength as a city. To temper the high opinion you all know I have for my hometown, I must throw in a caveat. I don't know much at all about the nightlife. I've enjoyed it, but I don't know it well enough to put forth my two cents on the subject. Unfortunately, I left Minneapolis just as I was able to take advantage of a very important facet of city life.

Whenever I go back, I get really excited, and then I realize I don't have anything to suggest to my friends when we want to hang out. Places I'd even vaguely heard of have turned out to have d-bag clientele or no longer fit who I am today. I feel powerless in that kind of situation, completely dependent upon the handful of my closer friends in the area who have stuck around to make their adult lives there. I would really like to be able to spend enough time there to make my own social decisions about the place. I'm sure it's always hard to go back to any hometown under those circumstances, when you've built your life in another place and grown into another person while being there, but I think it's especially hard, when one has such a glowing review otherwise, to be in the dark about a sizable facet of what life is for one now. Hopefully one day that will change, though. In the meantime, the places my friends have discovered and shown me have been right on target, and I look forward to the next time I get to visit my hometown, my territory, my state.

Foundations

This was something I originally wrote/posted April 5, 2008. DP says he really likes it, and so I thought I should use it to set more of a mature tone for this blog. Perhaps I'll have to give a status update on what our fridge looks like after SM and I move into the first place we'll have to ourselves in July.

9:58 am - My fridge
When I was younger, living at home with a full house including both of my parents and my five siblings, I used to dream about what I would have in my own refrigerator. In our house nothing lasted very long. All the finer things in life would especially disappear within hours of my mother's purchase. I longed to have applesauce that would still be in the fridge when I got back from play practice. I ached for one more pickle. I craved grapes at all hours, but I felt buying them myself was futile: they'd be gone before I went back for a second bunch. I swore to myself that when I grew up and had my own fridge I would stock it with all of the delicacies I desired. I would have jars and jars of applesauce. I would have a steady supply of fruits and certain vegetables. My fridge would be overloaded with yogurt and cheese. No milk, but in later fantasies soy milk was a must.

When I came to college I was shocked at the fact that I could finish the foods I had started. It was amazing! I bought yogurt, and the whole thing was just waiting for me when I got back. Sometimes I even had trouble finishing things before they went rotten. It was such a change for me that I sometimes forgot how long I'd been waiting for moments like those. Sometimes, though, I longed for even more freedom to stock my refrigerator and pantry. I lived with a number of different roommates, each with different opinions on sharing food, buying food together, etc. Instead of becoming completely autonomous with my fridge choices, I had to learn how to share in a different way from living with my family. Do I share food with my roommates? Do we buy groceries together? Or is it a completely separate arrangement in which I can't even touch their food? I decided I don't like having things that are off limits in my own refrigerator. That just won't do. It completely foils all the plans I have in mind for it. The dream still lives. In some cases we arrange certain foods that are for everyone, like eggs, so we always have a supply of them. The rest of the food pretty much belongs to the person who bought it, unless you ask of course. This arrangement is a good one, besides the fact that sometimes I just don't have the money.

And that's another aspect that has kept my dreams from being realized. Mom isn't buying all the food anymore; I buy my own food with my own money, and sometimes there just isn't enough of it. All those items in my dream fridge add up to a hefty bill sometimes, especially because in my dreams I'm always using the food in my fridge to Live Well. It's become an accessory in my Well-lived life. So the dream has evolved and grown into a fridge that is not only free from invasion, as I wished when I was living at home, to a wellspring of Good Things and a sign of prosperity, humility, and frugal living. Perhaps all of this is just a little too Utopian and way too invested in such a small thing. But for me dreams of my own refrigerator have permeated my life and represented other dreams all amalgamated into what I want my life to be. I've dreamed of getting out of the house, of living on my own, of how I want to conduct human relations, of financial freedom, of quality of life, all through my refrigerator.

The next development in mind is tied to my love of grocery shopping. I love going grocery shopping with people, and I look forward to a time when I will fill my fridge with foods that someone I love and I have picked together. (Does that make sense? I was trying not to say that I wanted to fill my fridge with someone...I keep getting images of someone stuck in a fridge...) It's a step from buying my own food but sharing some with my roommates to buying food with my boyfriend to fill up our fridge; of course there is room in between. For example, I might live with my brother in an apartment on the northside of Chicago next year, and I'm looking forward to going grocery shopping with him to fill up the fridge we will share. It's a feeling of family and community that combines the good points of my old life--living with my mom's fridge--with the good points of my new one--buying my own groceries for my own fridge. But taking that a step further, I think sharing a fridge with my boyfriend is something I really want to do. It's a further developed and totally new feeling of family and community I don't think I am ready for yet. But I think it will feel really good.