The October Ledger, Filed Late
When your lifestyle is structurally indistinguishable from unemployment—same hours, same drift, marginally more aesthetic conviction—you lose track of the calendar. Whole weeks evaporate. I looked up somewhere in late October and realized I’d done nothing with the month, not even filed the running tally of what’s been worth existing for and what hasn’t. Better late than honest.
Good: anatidaephobia—the technically nonmedical fear that somewhere, right now, a duck is watching you. Falling out of bed and accidentally having a Son Goku hairdo that took no effort. Subsisting entirely on red wine and calling it a cleanse. Buying cucumbers and carrots at the supermarket for reasons that have nothing to do with salad. The theoretical bathtub full of bubble tea I will never own but revisit mentally on a weekly basis. Planning a first date around Hero Hitler in Love, a Bollywood film whose title alone justifies the evening. Watching Suburgatory while missing someone specific—that particular overlap of a mediocre show and a precise ache. Auto-blocking trolls before they finish the thought. The philosophical dignity of dining and dashing. Fantasies involving two particular women I’ll keep between me and the ceiling. Draining your account and buying a flight to anywhere that isn’t here. Chris Poole’s talk on anonymity and internet identity—sit with it long enough and you start to understand why the whole thing works the way it does. Missing Charlie Harper the way you miss a real person, not a TV character.
Bad: everything still attached to the Oasis brand. Android. Owning a star-in-a-triangle tattoo without understanding what it announces about you. Blogs devoted entirely to Apple products. Social media as a spiritual practice. People who only have sex in bed—always in bed, only in bed, as though the floor has been morally condemned. Old men adding you on Google+ like it’s a service anyone uses. Reading the news online as a form of controlled self-harm. People who tweet during sex—not the buildup, during. Seventeen-megabyte press releases. Not understanding the world but having very loud opinions about it anyway.
Also in the bad column: Zooey Deschanel, and I’ll leave it at that. Festival lineups announced in October for the following summer, half of which will be irrelevant by March. Neighbors—loud ones, drunk ones, stupid ones, the ones whose headboard functions as uninvited percussion. Running out of cold medicine at the exact wrong moment. Baseball pre-empting The Simpsons. People who visibly chew the skin off their lips and somehow make it everyone’s ambient horror.