Problems with the Christian Youth

I think I'm fairly well qualified to write on this topic, too - I was one for a very long time. Even if I still believe in God and have fondness for aspects of the religion, I can also fairly well disqualify myself from that category: the "Christian youth" are the ones in YoungLife, who go to MidTown, who wrap their social and religious dealings up so closely that they forget that there's anything else out there.

For a little context, I'm in a wedding right now that requires me spending time not with the cool Christian kids that I used to hang out with (well, two or three of them), but rather the kids that they're hanging out with now. Is it wrong to call a certain set of them "cool" and a certain set . . . definitely not cool? Even if I don't buy into the same set of moral concerns that I used to, and if my actions are no longer driven by emulating Jesus in my daily life, I still live by a certain code that more or less requires me to consider others' feelings and treat people with respect. Sometimes I feel like this self-informed mode of values is far more effective - or maybe it just boils down to the fact that I was raised right.

But one thing that really strikes me, hanging out with a crowd of Christian youth, is that they tend to hide behind their Christian community as a way to avoid being real with anyone on the outside. I know Rachel felt it too, and I'm sure Alyssa was aware of the tension - not going to MidTown, or worse, not going to church at all, means that a lot of girls feel no need to get to know you at all. It's funny, because I felt the same way when I was actually going to MidTown. I guess even within that social strata, there are substrata that allow their members to ostracize people. All the girls I was with last night went to the same service (of the three that I think are still going each Sunday night - there was always a "cool" service to go to), knew the same people, had become close with the same leaders. If you don't know these people and hang out at the same times, clearly you must just be a godless heathen and nobody needs to try to connect with you.

I remember being the same way in high school - in fact, there were several weeks of crying and frustration among my youth group because some people didn't try to welcome new additions, and some people felt unwelcome even after having been there for a while. It's easy to hide behind the mutual friends and events that you can talk about with the people you know, and even easier to write someone off that's from a different circle entirely. When surrounded by your compatriots, you have their collective goodwill and the "us vs. them" mentality - some kind of primal instinct present in troops of monkeys and prides of lions - is strong. Politeness, genuine interest and kindness are unnecessary towards someone who has no tribe present.

This is not to paint myself as a victim, because like I said, I was like that once too. I had my defenses last night that allowed me to express my disinterest in playing that game - the only way to challenge it is to completely deny it - but it just seems vastly unnecessary to want to play the game at this stage in our lives. The concept of "young adult" allows for arrested development and offers what should be fully-fledged adults the ability to worm out of responsibility, both social and religious. Grow up - get a job, find the real world. If church for the youth is mostly about drawing bounds around specific types of people, then something is drastically wrong.

Open Letter to Managers

I've done something similar to this before - talking about my frustration with managers. I don't know if it's because I have a natural desire to delegate and make things happen my way, or if I just am my mother's daughter, but I have very strong feelings about certain parts of . . . any job, really. No matter what the situation, or the circumstances in the job, I get frustrated when people do things in a way that seem ineffective or inefficient to me.

It doesn't take long for me to feel strongly about the concept of "efficient," either; within a few weeks of beginning work - really, right about when I've found what I consider to be efficient for myself - I start to get frustrated when people do things in a way that makes them slower or less clean than me. Different doesn't matter - training a girl today, I tried to make it really clear that I mind when you don't attempt to be efficient, not when you do things differently than me.

But all that aside, my pet peeve for the day is when two people - who will go unnamed - do so much "managering" that they force me to carry the bulk of the work. I ranted a little bit to the third manager, who confirmed my frustration and then told me that it's just their ability to rely on me that leads to their inattentiveness. I understand that concept, and it's not a new one to me. Because I can do a lot of things all at once, and reasonably well, managers assume that I don't mind doing many things all at once for several hours at a time. Not the case, friends. Some days I would enjoy not having to push hard to keep up our standard of service. Some days I would really love to be the one who gets to chat people up rather than constantly be moving.

Moral of this story: when you have the same number of managers as you do hourly employees, there are going to be problems. I experienced that with great frustration at Chick-fil-A, where I trained several managers and then had to endure them telling me stupid things to do. I'm actually not great at masking my frustration with things that I could fix if given control of. Or being the one who's admired for doing things quickly and in a friendly fashion, but then not being listened to or helped.

And I know how all this sounds - like I'm really arrogant. But in all seriousness, Sean tells me every day how much of a void is going to be left when I leave, and I know it's true. I pay attention. That's more than I can say for a lot of people. I guess this is the other side of the coin from last week's blog - this is my I-love-you-but-can't-stand-you-sometimes letter to Drip.

Transitions

The title, which is, obviously, the story of my life. All the time transitioning from one thing to another - I guess this phase of my life is just comprised of changes. Steadily, things are changing for me, in ways I both like and don't like. I guess mostly ways that I think are beneficial, but that doesn't mean I find them comfortable. When have I ever been comfortable with changes?

I know it's been a long time since I've written, but I also know most of you are familiar with my circumstances. I'm sorry I haven't written more about Drip, really. Drip is . . . my ideal, in a lot of ways. And in a lot of ways, this may be my farewell love letter to it.

I love just about everything about this little coffee shop - the polished marble with that oh-so-particular early-morning shimmer; the dark wood tables that we buff every few hours with love; the large-pane windows that give the place such a wonderful natural glow. The aesthetics of the place are, without a doubt, the most wonderful thing I've ever seen. Watching coffee drip into a Hario, silhouetted against the cool morning light, is a somehow cinematic experience. Every time I walk into the place, I want to shoot a movie. Aside from everything aesthetically beautiful, the people are really what I will miss the most. At any point, I can go back in and look at that place. Probably shoot that movie, too - Sean remains my biggest fan, and has offered me a shift or two a week. He's such a generous man, and the thought of leaving a boss who already loves me and respects me is terrifying.

All of my co-workers have their flaws - they're crazy or they're frantic or they're passive aggressive - but I love each one of them and will dearly miss them. The bonding that occurs between people struggling to keep up with a giant mass of customers is priceless; it's a kind of in-the-trenches camaraderie that then quickly gives way to a comfortable joking when business becomes slow. We're a tiny family, by far the smallest I've ever been a part of, but one that I'm proud to have been accepted into. Leaving that family, after such a short but strong relationship was forged, breaks my heart. But the offer came in, and was too good to say no to. The only thing less than desirable about it was the timing, and my love for Sean and Drip had to be tempered by the fact that this sort of opportunity only comes around once in a decade. Someone has to die for the Nickelodeon to take resumes, and the odds of the Nickelodeon offering you a job out of the blue without you having actually turned in a resume? One in a million.

Even if the offer hadn't been massively flattering - Andy told me he wasn't interviewing anyone else unless I declined the position - it's the sort of thing that is either so awesome that it delays your grad school plans, or makes your grad school application look a thousand times better. Are you trying to apply to a Film and Digital Media Studies program? Everything about your application looks the same as everyone else's . . . except for the fantastic letters of recommendation and the five times you drop that you worked for one of the top independent non-profit theaters in the Southeast. Oh, and that you were deeply involved several years in a row with the renowned Indie Grits Film Festival. I agonized. I guess I agonized less over the decision - which was more or less made the moment Andy and I walked into Hunter Gatherer - and more over the fact that I was leaving my ultimate comfort zone.

It's not just that I love this job. It's also that I'm damn good at it. I'm not just being arrogant here, but I understand the mechanics of it. I'm good at the busy moments, as I can multi-task. I'm good during the slow moments, because I'm personable and I can jump right in for conversations. I make good drinks and I take pride in the job. Everything about it is in my comfort zone. Andy asked me pointedly if I was ready to start a 9 to 5 job where I'd spend lots of time in a windowless computer room ("I worked at the Film Archive for a year," I said, which got a good laugh), and even as I was saying yes, I was wondering if the answer was really no. The first week at Drip presented me with a bit of a learning curve, but this is a different curve entirely. Nothing about this will be familiar. Not the software, not the job description, not the people. Yes, of course I'm scared.

It is important to note that I have attained the holy grail, though - a job in the field I graduated in. Less than six months after graduating, no less. Getting back to the point, I want to say a few things about the customers: the people that I can't build relationships with any longer. Co-workers I can text and hang out with. The customers, the ones who I spoke to only for a moment or two every day, are the ones I will miss the most, in a way.

Every morning when Whitney came in, as I was pulling shots and handing her skim iced latte to her, I slowly built that relationship. She doesn't sit at the bar - she's not easy to get to know in the same way. But those little moments, like when she told me about her daughter's fourth birthday breakfast, mean a lot in this world. Marty has become important too - along with his sweet wife who has somehow managed to have five children (under the age of 11) and still look perfectly gorgeous and fit, and his three year-old son with disheveled blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. Marty gets a large coffee, and often one for his lady, and even though he's some sort of big-shot businessman or lawmaker or some such with monograms on his shirts and computer case, he takes a moment to connect with us. Or Jessica and Jame, who are board members at the Nick and two of the most loving, genuine people I've met. They came in two days ago to celebrate their ninth anniversary ("nine years of bliss," they both said), congratulated me on my new job, told me stories about their adorable kids.

Or some of the even more obscure people, like Jo. Jo just started coming in recently, and there's something unmistakably mysterious about her. She's tiny, with straight hair and beautiful dark skin; she speaks very softly and just ordered a small coffee. It's hard to explain what about her is so interesting, but yesterday was the first time I had the opportunity to ask her about herself at all. Or Heyward, the awesome web designer who asks for four shots in his lattes and always shows up at the same events I do. I'm fascinated by his crazy blonde hair, but also by how he's managed to be one of our best customers without us knowing much of anything about him.

Maybe the moral of this story is that Drip has reminded me that I like people. Cool Beans drew a frustrating crowd, college made me lose a lot of respect for people in my age range, and New York was just overwhelmingly over-peopled. But Drip was sort of the opposite experience for me - it made me remember that there's an art to food service and to connecting with people. There's just something so priceless about those moments of human connection between relative strangers. I'll miss that more than anything.

thesis voice-over draft 809

Almost a year later, I look back on my summer in New York City with a sometimes crushing sense of nostalgia. At risk of sounding wildly cliche, those memories are some of the most bittersweet that I can imagine. There's a ghost, one comprised of my memories, that follows me around even now. I want you to feel my ghost too - I want you to be left with a sense of haunting in the same way I have. Maybe that's more important than telling the actual story anyway.

So when I tried to write my autobiography - again and again, never capturing what I needed to capture to make it right - that formative summer became dominated by my experience with the trains. I didn't like New York City, just to be clear. But I learned to love the trains almost immediately: those huge iron beasts that are simultaneously so claustrophobic and so freeing. Even when the streets terrified me and my own apartment felt further from home than I ever could have imagined, something about the trains enraptured me. The motion, the rhythm, the way that they have a personality of their own - some dependable, some unreliable, some fast, some clean.

When I saw this footage, the old trains with their own peculiar ghost themselves, I was immediately drawn into a black hole of recollection. I imagine all New Yorkers - natives, transplants, expatriates - feel the same way about trains.

So rather than telling my story, I create for you a ghost. There have been many more interesting stories better told, but I hope to achieve the effect of such a story in a shorter time. I hope you will feel the bittersweet as I do, know the haunting as intimately as I have.

Beautiful Sunday

Does it seem funny that, at this point, Daylight Savings is completely taken care of for most of us? My phone adjusts automatically - as do all phones. My computer magically knows the same, the cable box too. The only clock in my life that I have to adjust is the one in my car - which is 18 years old and by industry standards a dinosaur (that I'd have no other way, to be clear). It seems on the verge of being an outdated standard, to my mind - the hour ahead and back has never so much affected how I wake up, and since it changes on a Sunday, most of us just find that we've woken up a little later than normal. Without all the hustle and bustle of changing clocks, what good is Daylight Savings anyway?

Something of note - I am so incredibly productive on weekends when I don't work. If I have Friday and Saturday off, I'm going to get so much done and feel so much better about myself. It's not just spring break that did it, either: there's just a really comforting availability of about 15 daylight hours that is not normally there. For the first time in a while, I feel caught up, even ahead, and as if I can make it through the next couple of weeks of classes with some amount of aplomb.

Today I've had the fun of doing things I wouldn't normally have time and energy to do, too. I've made some French bread loaves for later, given the dog a bath, gotten good feedback on my editing project, gone grocery shopping, and experimented with Brian's fabulous camera and gorgeous lenses. Now if only I can think of summer as being an extended vacation (yes, which it is) and not a breeding ground for my craziness, I could have days like these all the time.

Theory Creeping Into My Daily Life

Memories taint everything they touch. The second a memory is formed, be assured that wherever, whenever, whatever it associates with will never - quite - be the same. Brian Rotman's book "Becoming Beside Ourselves" discusses the "ghosted user" projected by every medium, and I'm starting to think that memory is the same. When I walked down the street with my best friend a few weeks ago, taking her to the last birthday party she would have in Columbia, there are a couple of things that stick out to me: my arm in hers, the sound of our boots on the sidewalk, the guys repaving the Bank of America parking lot. And I think that, at least for a little while, every time I walk by that parking lot and wander down that street, a little part of me will snap back to that awesome night.

Do you know what I mean, though? Every time you form a memory, that moment becomes indelible. As if it's not actually the memory so much as the fact that you are in the act of forming one - it's the process, not the product - and this re-perception of memory (versus the "remembering" process that may in fact be false) is triggered more by the fact that it was created in the first place. Mojitos don't taste the same anywhere but New York City. That Senate Street apartment will always give me a rush of memories of waiting and hoping for Brian. The sight of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" will always feel like a moving train for me. Negative memories are the same way, but the less said about those the better. But then again, can any memory actually escape the potential for wistfulness, and thus can any memory truly be happy?

I swing between being terrified that it's so short and being proud that it's so long - I'm onto ten pages of my thesis. Now before you start getting worried, that's ten pages of densely packed information on single-space type. There's so much to elongate and elaborate on, so I'm not so worried about length anymore. And if I add more - about sound, a little more about memory, and some quotes from this blog - I think I'm nearing a decent length for a senior thesis. And the information, dear heavens, is coming close to the point where I lose the ability to keep track of it. I don't know how people can write books. Twenty pages of information is nearly too much for me.

Mostly Pessimistic Thoughts

Sometimes I catch myself reminiscing over little snippets of my New York trip. I've not glamorized it so much yet that I don't remember all the angst and frustration - remember how I hated it, even? - but there are moments and emotions that I still look back on fondly. I remember laying in my top bunk with the breeze blowing against my back from my bay window, and I remember a mixed feeling of helplessness and independence. That's a strong emotion. It's beautiful and tragic all at once, when you feel both like you're accomplishing something amazing but also as though you're right on the verge of being in way over your head. I think that's an emotion that I experience regularly right now. I'm happy, I'm thrilled that things are going the way they are, but I feel as if I'm far too close to the deep end.

This U.S. history class has really shaken my worldview. The awful, atrocious things that America has done absolutely blows my mind. Not even the slavery, the exploitation of women and children, the lynchings and prejudice that lasted well into the 20th century (which seems as if it should have been the pinnacle of modernity). Things like the way we gained Hawaii, for instance. The U.S. government basically set into motion a series of events that they knew would lead to a revolt, and American sugar planters took over the government from the Hawaiian queen. Even some of Teddy Roosevelt's political moves just shock me - I was aware of a lot of the awful things that America has done over the years, but apparently that was just the tip of the iceberg.

It's not fair to say that without a nod towards some of the awful things that humanity as an entity has enacted on each other. It's nothing unique to Americans, it's unique to humanity itself. There's an innate kind of cruelty specific to people that even our closest evolutionary relatives don't have. Animals may eat their young, but it's with none of the same malice that the Spaniards tortured people with during the Inquisition. It's disheartening, really.

I have just the most amazing friends and family. In all seriousness, I can't imagine how I would make it without them. Last night, my sister and Casey hauled most of my belongings from my apartment to the new house. Troopers, the both of them, and all I did in return was give them some chocolatey non-coffee. I wish I could really express my thanks in some more meaningful way, other than just to say that I cannot imagine a life without the kind of people that I've been lucky enough to become close with.

I need to start thinking of "Brian's place" as "our place." That's going to be a shift. I'm four days away from having no other place to go, but I still just keep thinking of it as "his place." That's crappy from a personal standpoint, but I also need to learn to take ownership of it just so I can feel like I have something of my own.

More General Frustrations

I have one of the most pointless, frustrating jobs I've ever imagined. On the few days when I feel some sense of accomplishment or fulfillment, more often than not I'm told that, although I did something correctly, I need to do it again a different way for boss number three. And then halfway through that, I need to do it a third way for boss number four. I've worked places where the communication was heinous - nonexistent - but this more or less trumps them all. I'm all tied up by red tape, and anytime I do anything at all, I'm constantly afraid that someone else in a higher position than me is going to demand that I do it again, differently.

Bureaucracy and politics may, in fact, be the root of all evil. Not even state and federal politics (that one's a given), but just interpersonal politics that make all kinds of little things difficult. Or maybe my world is just too small - that's entirely possible. When all of the important people in your life know each other as closely as you know them, or closer, you're stuck in situations where you know more about each of those people than you want to know, and your role in the middle essentially boils down to "damned if you do, damned if you don't." I can't make everyone happy in this situation, and the real problem is that it's my fault for allowing myself to slip in the middle. Stupid, stupid.

My commitment - no, that's not the right word. My drive tends to waver or fade depending on certain circumstances. Being sick for so long certainly didn't help. I got sick, am still a little sick, and can't focus on anything simple for very long, much less Foucault and Freud through a feminist theory lens. Also the aforementioned situation leaves me feeling . . . an aversion. When I'm disillusioned by something (an easy task, as I'm sure is evident by this point), I feel far less desire to get things done. That's such a character flaw. I need to find my own drive and stop relying on others'.

This thesis is starting to really overwhelm me. I was sent back some revisions today, and although I'd totally expected an entire wall of blue to take over my three pages of notes, there were questions on there that, as far as I know, have no answers. Here's an example: "And this he means neurophysiologically, yes? In which case, you think of it in terms of the performative (a la Butler)." Oy. Butler confuses me, neurophysiology confuses me, and performativity (although Brian is currently ensconced in its grasp) confuses me. I'm learning, and so help me I'll have all of this at least tenuously in my head by tomorrow, but it's a brutal realization when your thesis no longer makes any sense to you.

Moving Woes

I get bizarrely melancholy whenever I move. It doesn't matter if I'm moving somewhere better (which I clearly am) or whether the circumstances are sort of forcing me into it - the fact that I'm ending a chapter of my life, and beginning another chapter, breaks a little piece of my heart. I know it makes no sense, but once I've become used to the circumstances I'm in, the idea of changing them goes against everything in me. Maybe each apartment is an incarnation of me - a little part of me that I'm leaving behind. Or maybe each of my apartments have been a manifestation of my personality, so moving out feels like a slow deconstruction. Whether or not I can put my finger on it, the melancholy, the reminiscence still looms large whenever I start putting belongings in boxes.

I think I'm going to change this blog around, and hopefully can start channeling some of my terror towards this (more constructive) venue. First of all, clearly I don't live in Brooklyn anymore. So I think it's important to label more what it is - "Theories on Life of a Soon-To-Be College Graduate," or something to that effect. All of my life that isn't concerned with finishing my thesis and keeping a half-step ahead of my classes is now concerned with figuring out how to cope with the crushing weight of my future. And those are just on days when I'm not constantly asking myself "why did I choose this major? Why am I not in the business school? What possessed me to go into the arts?"

Taking a break from the complaining for a moment, I'd like to mention that Brian has been so incredibly supportive through all of this. I know by this point he has little desire to talk through all of my life issues - that do pertain to him, but that don't get a lot easier even when you agonize over them - but every time I want to talk it over, he's game for it. He's told me that it's not over if I move, but that if I want to go somewhere else I could, and should. He's told me that if I want to go to grad school in another state, he'd have no problem going with me so long as that school had a decent rhetoric program. I don't know what I did to deserve him - no, actually, I know I never could have done anything great enough to deserve him - but I'm so intensely grateful for the crazy set of coincidences that led us to each other. I hope I'm half as good to him as he is to me.

Oh Sarah. Congratulations, dear one, on getting into your top school. I am so very happy for you - you deserve everything good that's about to come your way. Thank you for always listening when I'm frustrated or scared, for always supporting my crazy ideas (encouraging certain TA-baiting ones), for always being a great friend. I know what you're going through, all the anxiety that comes from moving to a brand new city, and I hope I can help you through it as much as you helped me, although I know you won't need it.

Where does a film studies major even start to find a job?