Jubilee

I've officially given notice that I'm out of New York in a few days. Thursday to be exact. My plan is to fly to San Diego, then drive up to Los Angeles for a sure to be historic Celtics - Clippers game, and then eventually make my way up the coast to San Francisco and eventually the annual Tahoe trip. My thinking goes that if I'm hoping to spend most of March writing anyway, I might as well stop paying rent. This exit also neatly marks my traditional three month restlessness. That's the bad news. The good news is I'm coming back to New York. Too much unfinished business here.

Plus I hardly "moved here" when I haven't gotten a job or secured a permanent residence. In order to faciliate going to this basketball game, I turned down a part time job offer from the temp agency. Had to do it. I didn't get this far in life suddenly picking responsibility over life experiences. So I'll pack half a suitcase and leave some of my things behind because that means I'm returning.

Over the weekend we had a pretty epic karaoke session. For one, I made additional headway on my "top five karaoke songs for each person" list. For two, after watching the Valentine's Day episode of Glee, I was already all about the Katy Perry's "Fireworks" but when Sharon belted it out (risking tearing her vocal chords out in the process), I moved up another notch in my love for the song. Clearly people agree with me, as the video has a hundred and twenty four millions views on Youtube. Is that even possible? 124,245,149 views. Having never seen the video till just now, I'd recommend you watch it too as fireworks are literally shooting out of Katy Perry's chest. There's probably some symbolism there but it's just kind of funny.

In an AIM conversation, I called Katy Perry "slutty," but my friend took great offense to it and suddenly I was the bad guy and hypocrite. See, a few weeks ago I had been defending Megan Fox's honor when this same friend called her a "ho." We agreed to leave it alone for the sake of our continued friendship but calling women "sluts, hos, ****s" is probably something that should be analyzed rather carefully.

Also, I'd like to think I'm pretty respectful of women but it's been pointed out to me that when I use "bitch" in reference to a man, it's implying that they are acting like a woman. So even if I'm not directly calling a woman "bitch," I'm saddling the word with the same connotations.

Possibly but not really related, here's an article about sports groupies, The Days and Nights of an NBA Groupie (2008).

What I'm slowly realizing, in talking to and thinking about people with artistic pursuits, is that being "____" has nothing to do with skill level. For example, my roommate right now is a terrific cook. She hones her craft with dedication and intensity. This past week she's been coming home from long days of work and then making macaroons from scratch. The process takes a long time and the results are professional worthy. The likely statement to make is obviously: "These are so good, you should sell them!"

There's this idea/dream that the best thing you do is logically your profession. In practice, that's rarely true. Being a professional means doing something over and over and consistently producing saleable work -- even when you don't feel like it. Instead of asking if someone is a professional, or if their work is professional worthy, it's probably more useful to ask something else entirely. I mean, if the common definition of being a professional is "getting paid to do it," then anyone can be a professional after a few gigs. But doing something full time, or supporting yourself off that skill, that's a different thing altogether.

Hum Drum

The past few nights I've been digging through some old web stuff and archiving it. I go through these moments periodically. My internal Time Machine must be set to Februrary -- as that's when I've generally been doing it the past few years. I download old photos or videos, put them on Flickr or Vimeo, and then update the main site that references where everything is.

I can't believe it's been ten years.

Some people look way different. Most everyone gained a little weight. Fashion sense is all over the place. Right after high school, George and I used to have a special place in our friendship hierarchy for people we'd known for ten years or more. Most of those people could have been counted on two hands. Now if I applied that rule, it's everyone I left college with. Actually, looking at these photos, almost across the board I've become way better friends with these people than compared to a decade ago. Back then we were friends who danced together; now we're friends who meet up to go dancing.

Also, I was reading through my first website. The bio was a thousand words about my life up to that point. I don't remember writing it at all. Hopefully my writing tone has changed since then, but otherwise it could have almost been written today.

"Ok, my name is Jon. I just finished four years at the University of Michigan: Ann Arbor (although I'm not done yet to be painfully honest). I have been in New York City since July-ish, looking for a career path. At Michigan, I was a philosophy major so that didn't directly translate into anything career-wise. My interests sort of divulged into the world of entertainment, as far as films and production. I also have varied career interests in marketing and business and in graphic design. To put it another way, I'm lost."

Looking through the guestbook entries and messages afterwards was interesting too. I guess it was the Facebook wall before the Facebook wall. Or more accurately, the Friendster testimonial. There's one message in there from a person who I thought was the absolute coolest in college. I was semi-thrilled when she left a comment and it stayed with me awhile. Nowadays, we're actually friends and I can call her or hang out whenever. Ain't life grand?

On the verge of moving out of Brooklyn, I've found out over the past few months that my college crush -- easily the majorest crush I've ever had in life -- lives around here. Plus, the girl who got me into building websites and introduced me to Ayn Rand possibly lives within a few blocks of me. In both cases I'm hesitant to contact them even though it would literally be possible with the touch of a button. A few years ago I would have done it to try to rekindle something lost, and to see how they are now. But older me has now come to terms with the idea that sometimes things are best left in the moment.

Curiosity kills me though. Absolutely kills me.

I am on my last few pairs of Chucks that I bought almost four years ago -- for seven bucks each. I don't even know if I've worn much of anything else aside from them. If pressed to think about it, I've probably only bought two pairs of casual shoes since. Hum, I think I better start a shoe diary in case I start purchasing footwear again.

Immortality. Take it. It's yours.

Right now: Applying to jobs. Lots of copy and pasting.

I don't know if you're as concerned with cyber legacy as I am, but ever since my dad passed away, George and I have both taken precautions to give our passwords to a semi-neutral third party. We don't trust each other with our information -- as evidenced by her unwillingness to let me into her Google account to organize her Reader the other day -- but in the event of tragedy, there will be a big party where we read each other's everything. It'll be embarassing and hopefully some secrets will be unearthed, but mostly it'll just be easier than having to ask service providers to crack everything open. Almost ten years later and we're still having to deal with junk mail in my dad's name and doing paperwork to retrieve account information.

This article, Cyberspace When You're Dead, is a worthy read. I think the prudent thing to do is to have a last post ready for my blogs, my social media sites, my contacts list, all of that. Then whoever accesses my stuff can just hit "publish" and be done with it. I don't want my online stuff gone, I just don't want it incomplete either. Our friend who committed suicide a few months ago, his Facebook page is still up, and the profile photo is a skull crossed with lightning bolts. People still leave him comments on his wall, which I find to be incredibly weird. How long will his profile stay up? Forever?

Today is my dad's birthday, he would have been sixty five. Happy new year.