Hey, Diggy: Do you think we didn’t learn much in April, or do you think we were just lazy about writing?

That’s not just the standard boring “post about not posting much” motif.  I’m actually curious to know if this blyrg has run its course, or if it’s the idea of continual learning that’s gotten old.

Or maybe it’s the self-analysis that we’ve gotten sick of.  After all, sitting here at my new (well, acquired-this-month) dining table, with Rocket sitting next to me looking out the window at dogs playing in the heat, I can’t think of any lesson I learned this month more valuable than:

Even if all you have is Diet Pepsi MAX and shitty Safeway ice cream, you can make an ice cream float, because that’s actually all an ice cream float is, genius.

But you didn’t come here for that kind of insight.

This has been a pretty quiet weekend.  My usual crew has been dispersed around the country, and although I haven’t exactly been doing nothing, I’ve had a lot of time to sit and look out the window with the cat.

It’s strange to enjoy doing not much — as I’ve written before, I’m not good at downtime.

But the opening of tennis season led me to start going to bed at like 10 (so I could get up at 6 to play), which somehow screwed with my circadian rhythm, which somehow resulted in my body deciding it wants nine hours of sleep every night, no matter what.

Okay, all this to say: My daily routine involves a lot less stuff than it used to.  I get up, I go to work, I come home, I eat, I go to bed.  Maybe once in a while I’ll have dinner or drinks with friends, or maybe I’ll go to the gym or play tennis or something, but the days in April just kind of sped by.

I end the month in a weird kind of holding pattern — waiting for things to change in my professional life, trying to make sense of the things changing in my personal life, taking some time off from trying to advance my material life.

It doesn’t feel…good, exactly.  But it doesn’t feel wrong, either.

In other words, holy shit, is this what growing up is like?

I went to see the National in Richmond earlier this month.  And one of my friends (he plays music) had never heard them before.  I sent him their new album, and he wrote back: “I should just fucking quit. This band is everything I ever wanted my band to be. I feel both depressed and validated.”

And that, as I told my mom, made me realize that writing is what I want to do, because while I certainly agree about this band, I get that same wonderful/awful validated/depressed feeling when I read a really good piece of writing, like the David Foster Wallace commencement speech or a good Matt Taibbi essay or a great novel.

She said that’s how she felt when she saw the Mark Morris Dance Company.

And the more I thought about that wonderful/awful feeling, the more I recognized it.

I think it’s related to why we cry at really good movies, even the not-sad parts, or why it’s weird to look at yourself in the mirror for the first time in a long time and notice who you are and how you’ve changed.

As I told my mom, I’m willing to bet that’s what it’s like to watch your kids grow up, too.

And I guess it’s what it’s like to grow up.

So, the moral this month:

Growing pains are worth it.

-andy

I guess this was bound to happen: today I learned this.  But that doesn’t really count.

This morning, I checked my mail and found a “Save the Date” for a college friend’s wedding in Spartanburg, South Carolina.  This is exciting, because it means I can take the Crescent.  I love trains.  The idea of eating up all those miles of track, speeding on a special highway to a different part of the world.  I am, as you know, a very cynical guy, but I am a sucker for the mystery and romance that comes with train travel.  I will probably dress up for it.

It all got me thinking, though, about peripheral vision.  We all grow up in bubbles.  Yes, even those of us who grow up in liberal families in big cities.  You can really only look at so many things at once, right?  And even the most open-minded kid with the most open-minded parents only knows a small piece of the world.  A big part of growing up is zooming out, realizing how much…stuff there is to see and know and eat and love and ruin.

I’ve never taken the Crescent to a wedding in South Carolina.  But neither have I worked on a farm, or built a model airplane, or written a romance novel, or run a marathon.  And I guess I’ve been feeling out of sorts lately because I’ve somehow landed at one of those moments where I am zooming out rapidly, constantly amazed at how much there is, eating up as many miles of track as I can.

I’m trying to decide what to do for a living.  But maybe that’s too narrow a question.  Maybe I should be deciding what to do for a life.

-andy

Today I learned that a girl I went to high school with (she was a year behind me) is the field director for the campaign I’ve parachuted into.  I walked into the office for the first time and within five seconds literally bumped into her.  It is a small world, and always has been, and many of the people who have been in it with me are now grown-ups.  Really, almost all of them.

Later, I listened to her giving an impassioned speech to her troops and thought about how un-unique my journey has been.  Fucking, everyone grows up.  Everyone learns things.  Everyone becomes an actual full person.  Even the ones we only know before any of that happens.

-andy