The “What’s New” Amnesia

Well, would you look at that? Two months to the day since my last post. I’d like to tell you I did that on purpose, but then I’d be a lying liar who lies, my pants would burst into flames, my nose would suddenly grow to be three feet long (and would be made of wood, which would be weird) … You get where I’m going with this. There’s no rhyme or reason as to why I write and post as sporadically as I do, it just happens. At first, I had an entire three-paragraph-long rant here about writing and not writing and why I don’t write when I want to, and it got very meta and I was annoying at myself for even writing it in the first place, so I decided to not subject anyone else to that little rambly piece when a long run-on sentence will serve the exact same purpose instead.

So, two months. What have I been doing for the past two months? You know, I find that I absolutely hate that question. Not the “for the past two months” part, I mean, the first part — the general “What’s new?” or “What have you been up to?” question. Being a person whose life and loved ones are spread out all across the country (including myself, my immediate family lives in five different states, if that paints a picture for you), I’m constantly having catch-up conversations with friends and family members that I don’t talk to nearly as often as I’d like. So yeah, the “What’s new?” is inevitable.

It seems like a harmless enough question, right? So why the vehement loathing? The thing is, I never, ever, ever know how to answer it. I always feel like I should have some epic answer, like, “I’m considering Hinduism!” or “I’ve invented a time machine and have started a dirty love affair with Julius Caesar!” or “I’ve gotten a full body tattoo that consists of only pictures of the Muppet Babies!” My real answers are always some awkward combination of, “You know, still working at the same place, it pays the bills. Yes, I’m still single, and no, I don’t want to talk about it.” and so on and so forth. I mean, more happens in my life day-to-day than I ever let on in those catch-up conversations. It’s like the question “What’s new?” just suddenly gives me amnesia and makes me completely unable to formulate an answer that actually gives anyone any sort of actual update on the general state of my life.

So now that everyone reading this blog post is all set to comment and say “HEY KRISTIN WHAT’S NEW AAAHAHAHA”, I will beat you all to the punch and ANSWER THE QUESTION.

I am still working at the same job at the same university press, and I am still happy enough in that it pays the bills and gives me insurance. I found out in April that I will not, in fact, be getting laid off in November as I had previously thought, which has made a world of difference in the whole caring-about-my-job thing, in addition to my whole feeling-of-self-worth-and-general-usefulness thing, which has been nice. While the job’s certainly not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, it’s steady, it’s stable, it pays, and I’m thankful it even exists. So there’s that!

In June I watched two of my very best friends get married. No, not to each other — two separate weddings on two separate days in two separate cities in Texas. Since I live in Chicago, I obviously had to travel for both. While affording the plane tickets wasn’t easy (buying just one these days is tough — two in a single month? The checkbook, it hurts), nothing in the world could have kept me from attending either of them. Frankly, I’m still weirded out that I’ve gotten to the age where watching my friends get married is something that’s considered normal. It’s even weirder to watch someone you’ve been so close to for so long make that next gigantic step in his or her life. It’s not necessarily a bad weird, though. It’s good weird, mixed with a, “How the hell did we get here?” kind of feeling.

In between the travel and the work, I’ve been trying, and succeeding, at enjoying my summer. When there’s hiking in the rain, insane neighborhood fireworks, BBC shows on DVD, and Rock Band renditions of “It’s Business Time,” just to name a few things, how can I not have fun?

So there you go. Two months have passed, and I’m mostly the same, except kind of completely different, except not really.