Is it bitchy to not want to hang out with someone you used to like being with because their life depresses you? About a week or so ago I ended up hanging out with Cory alone at V and Iz's place. I used to really enjoy Cory's company, although really we've never had much one-on-one time together. I was feeling sort of lonely and depressed about Ponge & missing Nathan (my brother) and Carrie (his baby mama) and Cory just is this kid who is sort of radical in politics and who is fairly educated about that sort of thing but all he does is like drink, read, hang out at coffee shops, and collect unemployment checks; as far as I can tell. To be fair he is trying to get a job at this hotel where a friend of his works. But at the time he just struck me as so dead...at the time I remember thinking. God - this isn't my crowd. I want to be around people who are really living life, who are active, who are looking for progression and acting on that search.
I am re-exploring my friendships up here, testing them to see if they still work. I don't really have a verdict so far, other than that the crew I met the summer before I left used to excite me so much. I used to want to be around them all the time. I don't think that is the case really anymore. Not that I dislike any of them really, just that it's not exciting to me to be jobless. It's not exciting to get drunk 4 out of 7 days of the week. It's not exciting to spend all of your free time milling about hipster & grungy coffee shops bullshitting about what happened when you were drunk. I like to do those things sometimes, but I really have no interest in that becoming my life.
I'm excited because there is a meeting on immigration issues coming up that I am going to go to. It might be a chance to do some organizing, to meet other active-minded people in the Cities, to get involved in something that I care about. At the very least I will have a chance to learn something of the local issues in the Cities and see some of the people working on them. I wonder if there are list serves centralizing political events in the Cities that I should be on or websites that I should check out? I should do some research.
As far as Cory & some of that crowd are concerned...I don't want to feel like I am in a position to judge their life styles. But it is really confusing to me how these kids from wealthy families who actually have a political clue don't bother to use their priviledges to work on issues that piss them off... They are younger than me, as well. I didn't used to think there was much of a difference between 21 and 24 (I'll be 24 in 3 months), but there really can be. There also is a difference between a person who is still in school and/or supported by their parents or a trust fund and a person who needs to make it on her own and help her immigrant husband make it as well. Ponge is an adult (he's 26) but he is from a very different society than the one we are living in now and he is not capable of being as self-sufficient as I am in this country at this point. It's coming along, but it will probably be years before he is truly adjusted to living here (or at least as close as one can get in his position).
Speaking of ponge - he is coming home tomorrow at about 5pm. Yay! I think these five days of being apart have been really nice and good for us, considering all the time we've spent together in the past month (most of it in the apartment). I definitly have enjoyed having the apartment to myself (and the TV off) and I'm really glad he got a chance to get out of the city & be with his soccer boys. He got to see Chicago & stay at a house with a whirlpool and see my mom. He deserves all of those things, and his soccer team won the tournament so I'm sure that makes him feel good about himself.
I want to establish some more TV rules. We talked about the TV once and he turned it off for a of couple hours a day for a few days but then seemed to forget about it. Carrie suggested that he pick some favorite shows he liked to watch and we negotiate around those. Personally, I can't stand the Maury show and would prefer to never see or hear it again.
Well, I should go read so that maybe I can get to sleep before 7am. My schedule is so fucked. I wish I had some cookies or chocolate-peanut butter ice cream or something naughty and delicious.