in three hours i'm off western eu capitals, countries of the former habsburg-lorraine empire, tiny baltic states, and remnants of the former yugoslavia! this is the most casually assembled, aimless itinerary ever...i'm spending three hours in vienna solely to consume a proper slice of sachertorte.

on the eve of any journey, j. joyce's stephen dedalus should always be revisited:

Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time (seemingly, but not quite there..) the reality (/absurdity) of (new and existing) experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul (and the lens of my camera) the uncreated conscience of my (self-confused) race.

back in ny august 16!

xanga shouldn't be used exclusively for life updates to, at max, two friends - both of whom already know the current status of my where-abouts and where-about-to-gos - but i will seize it for this purpose anyway. that last sentence enjoyed quite a few parenthetical modifications.

may: returned from vegas (training on the company dime), quit consulting job, picked up hostessing job in chelsea, thereby reversing my work week (thus working saturdays and sundays while enjoying the other five days off). my days off were filled up by morning correspondence, lunch dates with friends in various corporate locations, afternoon activities off my "to do in new york" list (it's huge. i'm behind), followed by quick run or spin class, then dinner, then more catch-up dates with friends. double duty socializing on weekends.

june: same schedule as late may. have given up on most items on my to-do list for most part (not running a 10k anytime soon. not sure if going to make it to brooklyn ice cream factory in dumbo, or red hook brewery in red hook, or to the arepa lady's cart in the bronx). i am going to duluth, minnesota, for a peer wedding - a first for me! $2 well drinks, world's largest open-air iron mine, and drive-in movies await me. i'm still behind on catching up, and still frustrated with the fact that i am still catching up - why must i always catch up with people? why can't we just all exist, everyday, in one another's vicinity, not unlike in a college dining hall...this is one delusion which i hope to hold onto (j.a.r. please correct the grammar here for me!) for as long as possible.

july: moving out of my apartment back home to queens, going on vacation with parents to montreal (still completely unplanned...oops), learning how to drive, going to london and paris to see friends

august: budapest-bratislava-vienna-krakow-gdansk-warsaw-vilrius-riga then to london en route back to ny. hopefully getting my driver's license, and moving to cambridge august 30

whew.

just came back from lunch with coworkers (former, consultants) on stone st. - the only pedestrian-only cobbled street below houston, truly an oasis in the financial district. between five girls we ordered three entrees and two appetizers. everyone had sauce on the size, and everyone had at least one modication to her order (hold the onions, extra avocado, no aioli, greens instead of fries, salad insead of sandwich, extra limes, brioche instead of ciabatta). as for contents of our conversation: 1/3 office gossip, 1/3 life catch-up, 1/3 future-speak (plans for weekend, vacations, life, etc.) sprinkled with many snarky remarks regarding fellow diners (why does that skirt have pockets? is that supposed to be a dress or a shirt? look at those fresh-faced interns whose entire lives stretch before them, holding so many uncrushed promises still). watches: two cartiers, one ebel, one michele, one baume & mercier.

it's weird to catch yourself thinking you're a caricature of someone else whose image you hold in mind and then realize that image is actually one of yourself. but i don't even work anymore. after this weekend i won't work in any capacity - i'm quitting my hostessing job since i plan to be on-and-off vacationing for the next 10 weeks...

hostessing is the only job i've continually loved (though i admit it's only been a two-month endeavor). every weekend i find myself unabashedly thrilled to wake up at 7:30 saturday and sunday mornings to start my eight hour shift. two hours are spent trying to wake up with shots of espresso IN my coffee and setting up the table tops. four hours are spent actually seating people and enforcing invisible velvet ropes between the dining area and the waiting area. another two hours are spent eating the restaurant family meal and sitting at the bar while the bartender makes as many complimentary cocktails i can drink at 4pm. and of course, endless gossip about co-workers, customers, managers, and friends of co-workers fills every single moment. every male waiter has exactly two of the following three characteristics: gay, brazilian, jewish. my co-host (gay, jewish, asperger's syndrome, brilliant composer), his unrequited love interest -our hottest waiter (gay, brazilian, adhd, former model) - and i find that work generates so much gossip that we actually need to meet outside of work to debrief. thus we have tuesday coffee dates at 9th st espresso (at the alphabet city flagship) where we properly expel all our thoughts about the management et. al. over gorgeous latte art (in macchiato w/whole, cappuccino w/2%, and mezze w/soy, respectively). there is little not to love about my hostessing experience - both inside and outside of the restaurant. i will be sad to leave my clan there, but hope to see them as often as i see my consulting job clan

i feel like i am reluctant to ever leave people, but it comes at an expense, as i am never really consistently there for anyone. even when i'm here i might as well not be. hopscotch is fun, but it's a game for children. no one noticed when i cut my hair a few months back, because no one saw me consistently enough on a semi-regular basis - not my roommates, parents, co-workers, none of the usual suspects even!

i had my chance of one year of being a real person in new york. only one year, because i'm returning to school, and students are the opposite of real people - it's true you know it's true. i'm not sure if i gave real-personhood a chance if the most persistent characteristic of my life these past months is that nothing persists.

not constantinople, here i come!

ps. i'm going back to harvard in september

sooooo conflicted about where to go for school. for all my alleged "specialization" in the field of judgment and decision-making, i sure as hell am bad at its application...well i guess that just proves it's not an in spite of, but a because of type of relationship between what i study and what i (don't) understand..

despite the fact that i am committed to (no-it's less aggressive than that. i am actually even resigned to) finding happiness at the program to which i ultimately commit, i am miserably dragging my feet and procrastinating my decision to resign myself to five well-funded years at...new haven? princeton? pittsburgh? new york? these programs that were on the next tier of my list were relatively easy to crop, though i would have been thrilled to find myself as beggar (hence, non-chooser) had i only been admitted to one program - any program. i flirted with the idea of life in palo alto - from afar in early september when this whole process first began, and then from a-near when i finally visited in late february - only to have my academic feathers completely re-ruffled after a visit to chicago this past weekend.

where does my impatient, noncommittal, and restless self belong? too many years of city public schooling has ruled out the possibility of my reinvention as a californian. though i love californians, i can never BE one. the past four years have taught me just how wonderful life as a masshole cantabrigian can be - and crossing the river to allston would give me a nice twist on a familiar environment i already know i love. i was never teased by the idea of becoming a mid-westerner (yeah, very sexy label indeed) until this weekend, when the behavioral economist who is largely responsible for both: 1. generating my initial interest in the field, as well as 2. the ultimate rejection of my might-have-been-publication in a journal whose mere title elicits cerebral pavlovian salivation (hint: it's but one word) sat me down and stated very frankly that while we do not share any of the same opinions, and would never work together on any academic project, it is extremely apparent to all in the field (including, allegedly, one of my undergrad advisers) that my interests and my work reveal that i simply belonged at chicago.  but let's back up here: "exactly" "what i want to study" - these are not perfectly clear to me, yet it seems perfectly clear to those around me...how could that be? meanwhile, my advisers in cambridge call to check up on me: "you were meant to return here. look forward to seeing you at the lab group ski retreat in my cabin in new hampshire!"

so much confidence surrounding me, and none to be found within.

what to do? try to "be brave" (what does that mean?) and go to the windy city where my head thinks (rather, my head is told) it will find its thought-mates? or back to cambridge...a prospect almost no one in the field rejects (only one person in the last ten years rejected the opportunity i am toying with/toiling over right now). after all, in the end it is still my undergrad advisers who have inspired me most, and it is they whom i wish to emulate. all their phds were from elsewhere though (hence the rule: schools generally do not hire - nor do they tenure - their own...)

thinking about this always makes me want to cry. it is absolutely absurd. i've got the grad school world on a string. i could not have hoped for a better outcome. and yet i feel utterly helpless. really - who could even sympathize?

the person i wish i was (were? and no, this is not grammatical ambivalence...it is ambivalence over the appropriateness of the subjunctive) is so different from the person i am and have the capacity to become.

i would that i had a spine, and fewer thoughts.

long time no post in xanga...somehow an email to a friend got me xanga-thinking (which is - somewhat alarmingly - where a lot, but hopefully not all, of my thoughts happen):

being employed is a strange thing. i know very few people who have found pleasure in their employment. some enjoy what employment allows them to do - blow (a controversial word in itself) an entire paycheck on a chanel bag, for example - but i really know very very very few people who find satisfaction in their choice of employment itself (this holds true across different age groups). just-out-of-college-people in particular: most (excepting those in professional schools) by default seem to be looking towards the next step, planning what they will be doing in one, two, three years. for our generation it's seems like what you do right out of college is by definition NOT what you're going to do the rest of your life. it makes me wonder whether the pressure we put on ourselves to choose rationally (or at the very least, financially-soundly) makes sense when we're 21, 22...if whatever we choose usually ends up predictably unrelated to how our long(er)-term careers ultimately unfold.