I'm adjusting to living in the city. Against my will.
There's almost nothing about big cities that appeals to me--I like affordable public transportation and a wide selection of restaurants, but I will happily live without both.
But having a great job helps. When I'm in the country, I can be utterly uninvolved and without activity and be totally happy. I'm more than satisfied to lay in my mom's yard and just doze for hours. But in the city--I quickly learned--it all just starts to close in on me. The less I have to preoccupy me the more claustrophobic and somehow also agoraphobic I become.
In the time before I got my job, I had a lot of mini breakdowns. Two or three everyday, in fact. Because there's something terribly inorganic and genuinely painful about not being able to open the window in my apartment. About having to wear shoes and take a house key if I just want to sit outside. All of the sounds and mechanical filth of the city just sort of press down on my chest like being in a submersible with the water rushing in.
We can't even have a gold fish for god's sake. It's so far from my character... so alienating.
But my job lobsters, I mean, bolsters me. Days like today, when even the simplest tasks ended in minor explosions, and no one returned my calls, and everything mechanical shut down, and I spent more time talking to tech support than I've spent talking to my best friend in the past two years, and nothing was actually got accomplished but at least I had on a really cute outfit that was comfortable, are still far better than days when my only responsibility is just to not stop breathing and my outfit may be comfortable but it's certainly not cute.
Tim and I get to go to lunch together everyday. We work three blocks apart in the very heart of downtown. Having that time together makes the hated sidewalks less dreadful. I still don't ever want to live in the city. Not now or ever. But I'm enjoying it for now. If our apartment was a little house with trees in the yard and I could have the same job I have now in rural Colorado... well, now that would be home.
It's like having a plane fly into your house(Garp)it won't happen again- so take advantage of the opportunity to do something you would not normally do- be the city-walk into the place like you own it- keep in mind who is giving you advice- think of Ferris, "I don't even have a piece of shit- I have to envy yours." Make everyone disappear just like I used to at W2.
ReplyDeleteDon't let the city get to you....Get to the city....I'm not sure if that makes sense, but it seemed like it might be good advice...I'm in Dallas right now for training for my job and I'm overwealmed by it all....it's just Dallas, but it makes New Orleans look like a one stoplight town...Have a good week!
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