Rich People Die Unhappy

"If this path is so right,
Then why can’t I sleep at night?"
-The Noises 10 "Stuck in the backseat"

This is a post I’ve been putting off for awhile—one because it’s not an easy thing to write about and two because I’d hoped (and pretty much rightly so) that if I waited, there’d be a cheerier outlook on things. But at this point: I’ve got to get it out of my system in the hopes of sleeping easier.

(Disclaimer: if talks about depression, a liberal does of general bitching/pity-party-for-one hosting, and pretty-obviously-employed-as-coping-method jokes about depression aren’t your cup of tea, then don’t read past this little period. Oh, and it’s pretty long.)

As alluded to in an earlier post, I’d figured that things weren’t quite working out in Athens like I’d hoped, and that an attempt to grow up and move on with life was in order.
Parts of that plan not quite working out like I’d hoped have allowed the dreaded second thoughts to creep in. Everyone I told the "move to Atlanta, get a real job" plan to has endorsed the idea.

And that alone makes me nervous in a prolix, retroactively self-doubting, "so did everyone think I was fucking up sticking around Athens as long as I did? Or was it just the low-paying, not-writing-enough aspect? Etc." way. So a pretty specific type of nervous is the point.

Add to the nervous the fact that almost all my dwindling circle of friends remaining in Athens are engaged or cohabitating or otherwise no longer single, and sure, almost none of them go downtown on much of a regular basis, and sure last Saturday—it being one of those gloriously sunny and warm days that makes me say "hey, there is an upside to Global Warming"—since no one would join me at the pool I (admittedly after a few shots worth of Patron and several beers) decided to go meet some of my neighbors (ironically enough though the girls playing perhaps the World’s Longest Game of Beer Pong weren’t residents, but you didn’t hear that from me). As Radiohead’s DVD title says: "Meeting People is Easy."

What’s not easy is finding a job in Athens that can pay even in the neighborhood of $30,000 a year with benefits (assuming you’re like me and have no PhDs or law degrees or 5 years or more of computer programming experience—and even then there’s no guarantees and odds are you get paid less than you would at the same job in a city like, say Atlanta.)

And my personal sort-of motto of "less money in Athens but happy" hasn’t really been holding a lot of water for a while, despite my attempts at invoking it even on a date (which was a very happy time indeed. But how much of that was because it allowed me to not think about the job situation, future etc.) That "funk" or worse feeling has shown up several times, dating back at least to last summer, but even that first year I stuck around after graduating in ’03-’04 where Athens didn’t feel right to me.

"And after all this time, you were waiting on the rideTo stop at the place where
they slowly misplaced your life..."

-Butch Walker "Joan"

I can’t deny a large portion of it is the money. I’ve tried denying that for years: I’m done. It was and is a factor. Not just in a paying the bills and a shiny iPod for working out, but dating too. Especially dating.

The Girl (note: I'm not using her name here, but she gets big-time proper noun-status anyway) was incredibly low-maintenance—yet another plus in her favor, among many; if I listed all her good qualities it’d crash Blogger’s server and her bad qualities would take a few lines at most—but I wasn’t exactly advertising just how tight money was either. She knew from the first date I wished my job had the benefits (and hours, and non-punchclock regimens) her job had. She knew then I was not exactly jumping for joy with my current financial situation (see the note below about my buddy’s salary supra, that story was mentioned too).

Money wasn’t an issue for her(well, the money I had wasn't an issue; I got the impression she, like most people, would enjoy having more than she was currently making, and while she downplayed her work, she was probably more than enough of a badass at it that she probably did/does deserve a raise). She practically bent over backwards to keep me from paying for dinner all the time. But it was an (mostly unspoken) issue for me—not so much picking up the check at Bissette’s or Mellow Mushroom or wherever—but more importantly any time I’d look more than a few weeks into the future.

She had a great idea that we could both take our laptops downtown, or to the dog park (well, the second one was more of a plan for Spring or one of those non-freezing days in the fall) and write, together (can you blame me for falling ass-over-teakettle-grade smitten?). The catch: I had no laptop, and really no feasible way to buy one. Several weeks (and a literally teeth-chattering fall cold front) later on somehow our conversation turned to ski lifts and how the height made her nervous, I think a television ad was involved, and I pointed out that a two-person lift can be quite romantic, if it’s the right two people (especially if the resort’s set up for night skiing, and there’s a hot tub to "recover" in afterwards.). Then we talked about maybe taking a trip…I was thinking somewhere close—perhaps the classic three-day weekend retreat to someplace where the snow is only slightly more natural than Pamela Anderson-?(Rock? Lee? I don’t really know or care at this point)’s décolletage, like say either one of those resorts in Boone, NC—but yet again, I could throw the idea out there, but I knew I couldn’t actually make it happen. And it eats away at you.

I can add up the figures and sometimes wonder how I had any bit of a life (and then be amazed that I was able to have an amazing relationship for even two dates, much less a few months.) The numbers in a nutshell: after rent and bills, I was left with $100 (or sometimes less—a lack of health insurance, coupled with far too many stretches where I would eat way too much junk/fast food and not work out wrecked perfect attendance) per week for food, fuel in the car, and…well, maybe it was a good thing I didn’t have many friends that liked going out downtown. It eats away at you.

That went on for a year. November and December prior I was searching for work, and blowing the tiny bit of savings I had accumulated working in the ‘burbs. But unlike some folks who graduated, worked outside of Athens and moved back, I wasn’t really taking that big of a pay cut. I hadn’t worked continuously for long in the ‘burbs, thanks primarily to what I’m pretty sure now (there was never a formal diagnosis or anything—I had no health insurance, but also just enough vanity or pride or whatever to not ask my folks for money to see a psychologist) was a pretty nasty bout with depression that winter (other than the occasional band practice, my mental health was helped the most through the two-hour blocks of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TNT. So basically I can date the length of that depressed period by however long it took TNT to air the last few episodes of Season Four—starting with the episode where Faith killed a man—to right about the time in Season Six that Buffy and Spike’s wild sex brought a building down on them.)

So while "I left Atlanta and more money for Athens" may technically be true, I wasn’t exactly rolling in dough there—and I followed the same job search pattern I employed in Athens in my first post-grad year: take the first job offer you get, even if you can’t imagine staying there long. I’ve got a friend that graduated UGA all of three months later than I did who made $70K last year and at minimum $150,000 since graduating. I don’t want to actually dig out my tax returns, but I’m pretty sure my entire income from graduation in ’03 to my ’06 income added up might not even be $70K. And it can eat away at you.

Because one year is maybe adjustment to post-college life, or my plan to take a year off and the go back to grad school, but after several years of struggling, the cumulative effect on my overall confidence is: not good. But I’ve got lots of friends who will tell me how brilliant I am, or how even in my (well, to me) goofy-looking driver’s license picture I looked smart. Plus also a number of friends telling me on the frequent occasions my current relationships with the fairer sex haven’t gone beyond a date or two that I really should have a girlfriend. So, how much of those comments win out over the reality of being single and poor registers as true, and how much self-doubt based on the small figures on the checks and little to no money for dates takes over? At what point do you begin to feel a scarlet F (for either "failure" or "fuckup" depending for how vulgar I’m feeling) on you at almost all times? When do you admit to yourself that because a girl dates an older guy it’s not because she’s out for his money, but it’s because he’s not drowning in doubts about how he could afford to travel and see her, or the classic insecurity-in-relationship killer "what does she even see in me?" question? And when do you stop and reflect that your dream of coming back to Athens, and what you wanted to do, and what you’ve wound up doing, don’t mesh? Again (well, by know if you’re reading this you can detect the them I’ve been going for at the end of these paragraphs…)

But am I really talking myself into plans of a "real job" in Atlanta, and moving away from the town I’ve called home for seven out of the past eight years?

Or am I simply throwing in the towel because I think someone special had come into my life, and I realize now I screwed up, again, in the same poor communication way that’s screwed up some other promising relationships?

And that maybe the money isn’t a reason why I clamed up at the worst time, but an excuse?
(The quick backstory: when things stopped working well dovetails with my turn from being honest and open with her to lying or avoiding talking about issues because I figured that that was what she wanted. Insecurity strikes again.)

I’m sure it’s actually a bit of both. Sadly, I’m also sure even if The Girl suddenly decided to call me up and give me a second (well, by my unofficial count at least fifteenth) chance, it’d yet again end badly. She may not have the whole world on her finger yet ("yet" being the key word here), she’s got a pretty amazing life going on right now, all the hopes and dreams still in the air, and I’ve got…a band that is on "hiatus" (rock musician euphemism for "broken up"), a temporary job that will likely be followed by another temporary job while I continue to send resumes out, and obviously, a disposition that’s probably just as sunny as the one I had back in November that I think quite literally manifested in a kind of contact depression in her. (Note: I’m let’s say 99.9999% sure I’m not currently depressed, and this rant leans towards the nadir of my daily moods, not how I am daily.)

What do you do when your roots have dissolved and broken down And the soil
that you grew in when you were small Has become nothing more than dirt in some
dirty town
When you list all the qualities that you despise And you realise
You're describing yourself?
-Marillion "This Rake's Progress"

Before the temp job came into play I wound up spending almost a month attempting to send out resumes and find work in Atlanta while spending most of my time in Athens. Mostly I slept too much, then finally did a benefit-of-distance postmotem on the relationship with The Girl and well, sometimes seeing yourself how someone else sees you, holding that mirror up to your face, isn’t a good thing.

I could feel the symptoms of depression building again—not "the funk" but the real, ominous, Ideation-rejected-but-still-frightening thing, something like what I felt a few years ago—and something had to give. So I went to Plan B (the temp jobs until something better is found) and started hitting the gym daily, cutting almost all fast food out of the diet. Plan A1+, for the record, involved a large lottery-winning financial windfall, endowing UGA with a true MFA program for creative writing (could DFW be talked into moving to Athens from Pomona in California?), somehow purchasing the old DialAmerica building and deeding it to the folks at Nuci’s Space (I picture a bigger venue for fundraiser shows, more space for practice, and maybe even a small parking deck on the current lot’s footprint, that could raise brobdingnagian amounts of money for the place on gamedays alone), outfitting the band (or a band that I’d play guitar in) with pro gear, and spending even more time writing (which, I will note I’ve been trying my damnedest to be diligent about now, because if I take a "I’ll finish the book when I have more time" attitude, it won’t get finished.)

But several million-to-one-shot-odds fantasies aside, here’s the basic conclusion of a good bit of painful self-reflection:

Insecurity, especially financial insecurity, can make me a really terrible person. I clam up and avoid telling anything remotely approximating the truth to those close to me—especially anyone I’m dating. If I feel I’m "losing" her, I can try stringing together long strands of pent-up things I should’ve told her before (and not all at once) mixed with what I think she wants to hear in a pathetic attempt to get her to stay. I fall into that terrible mistake of picturing relationships as "having" and "winning over," terms of conquest and possession and all that horrid shit, instead of equal, even though I know deep down it’s the equality I want. I manipulate and censor aspects of the relationship when things turn sour to make myself look better and her worse. And if someone figures out I’m doing it, even confessing it later can be a strain on her trusting me. It’s a nasty cycle and I don’t like the guy causing it. And I don’t want to be that guy again. Ever.
He feels like shit constantly, makes those he claims to love feel like shit, and he’s the little fucker that wants to pull me back into depression.

What I want is to feel like the guy The Girl thought I was to begin with—a funny, happy, confident guy. And while my romantic side doesn’t want to admit it (but screw him, the manipulative asshole side of me can talk my romantic side into too much problematic shit) it’s going to take money to kill off the insecurity. Or at least hopefully wound it—perhaps main it in the leg or something so that I can clearly hear it coming and sweep its maimed leg and throw it away.

If I’m being honest with myself Athens isn’t 100% ruled out then, but it’s an almost lottery-winning longshot. Atlanta’s the first choice, and I’m hoping something good is in the pipeline (and I’m not totally grasping at straws here, there are multiple reasons for hope in the pipeline. Even if that’s a lousy mixed metaphor.) If that fails too? Well, several years back I had started looking into what it might take to get a work visa to Australia...

Beauty The Stars

Remember a several months back when I posted a blog entry ripping Fall-Out Boy? I posted it around the same time I first started thinking (but not aloud) that maybe living in Athens, while single, and working a non-salaried, non-benefits-providing job in my mid 20s (don’t even say it: 26 is closer to 25 than 30 damnit) well, maybe it wasn’t the best idea.

Plus as a result of my occasionally bouts of self-doubt and extreme pickiness (though I prefer the term “high standards”) and long dateless spell, I was shall we say, a bit bitter. And “sugar we’re going down” was getting played way too much. And that song with the long title, longer (seemingly) video, and whatnot was all over MTV2 and FUSE. So I took my pissed-offitude out on them.

But here’s a multi-part confession: I liked then, and still have a weakness for the other single from that album. “Dance Dance” is catchy as hell, even if I’m no great fan of the lyrics. Pete Wentz=not half as clever as fancily-coiffed high school scene kids would have you believe. That said even some of his cheesier moments lyrically looks like Wallace Stevens compared to crap like that Papa Roach song (I forget the name, but the video royally pissed me off—he's a pompous, self-rightous straightedge punk, and oh no, his girlfriend, played by the ohmydamn-inducing Taylor Cole, gets drunk at a party and falls down on some folks. So he pours out her booze, she accidentally burns down his house and he dumps her. But I maintain if he hadn’t been such a dick and poured her booze out, she wouldn’t have needed the cigarette…and Google says the song was called "Scars", but anyway, back to my rant).

(That bottle in her left hand looks like Dewars...I think pouring that out's grounds for your place burning to the ground but that's just me.)

So yeah, guilty pleasure? Maybe. But Infinity On High is good stuff so far (though I’ll admit a strong bias to the song Butch Walker guests on).

Related sub-confession: I still don’t like the first single from the album (“Shut the god damn door” just doesn’t work for me as part of a hook. The lesson being, I think, that if it’s something a crotchety old person would say, it doesn’t belong in the chorus of a rock song. But give it a few more decades and there’ll be old folks screaming out classics like Poison Clan’s “shakewhatchamamagaveya” so this is a rule with a time limit) but Panic At The Disco, when they’re good, is pretty damn good indeed. “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage,” seemingly needlessly long song title aside, is a really kick-ass blend of that 80s pop/dance revival stuff The Bravery and The Killers (well, on Hot Fuss anyway) did so well, with semi-pop-punk rock. And the ADD arrangement style of most of the songs (like an MTV film editor and cuts, they don’t stick with any one musical passage for long) works.

There is some melancholy in all this though too: while Fall Out Boy headlines an arena tour, there’s part of me that goes through my old concert ticket stubs, pulls out one from the 40watt, and wonders “why didn’t Left Front Tire blow up?”

They put out two full-length albums with a great (and listening to bands like The Academy Is… and Fall Out Boy, clearly marketable) blend of Blink 182-style pop punk and 80s arena rock. So many songs had catchy hooks I get tempted to make a bad simile involving a fishing license. They opened for Butch Walker at On the Rocks in Atlanta (I believe this 99X show is where Butch’s kickass “Queen Medley” was performed…since I didn’t get to attend his acoustic show on his DVD, this is my current chance to be on the same recording as Butch—even if it’s along with 20,000 or so other folks screaming/singing the “Bohemian Rhapsody” opera parts…I hit the high note though. Plus Butch invited the entire crowd to Smith's after the show, and thanks to LFT being there, I was able to briefly meet the man himself.)

They had a song on the American Pie 2 soundtrack. They played Music Midtown and Big Day Out multiple times. They were (and still are) what is sadly a rarity in the music business: genuinely great guys. Sure, they may barge into your apartment with a bottle of Jack and give you a whiskey wake-up call, but if that’s really “horrible” to you, I advice you go back to the Focus On The Family and Parents Television Council websites. Nothing here will not piss you off.

Athensmusic.com has some clips from 42 Ways to Lose a Friend I highly recommend scoping out.

Also, their old Drummer, Josh, now sings and plays keys for a new band, Holiday, that’s a bit more rock/alternative and a good bit less punk, but still very good. Check ‘em out on MySpace.

In Thursday night TV news, well, Grey’s must not have missed me or paid attention to my blog (not that I really thought they would: you can go ahead and accuse me on many counts of being self-absorbed, but not this), because they spent a while showing repeats after the OC went to the big TV show heaven in the sky (it’s currently being wooed by Arrested Development, after a fling with Wonderfalls and a disastrous first date with BtVS). But now, we’ve had two new episodes in a row (and NBC has even put 30 Rock—which kicks ass—on what better not be permanent hiatus)…and…there are some great moments and some stuff that really just bugs me.

So Callie has a brobdingnagian trust fund, large enough that she can not only easily live at Seattle’s version of The Waldorf-Astoria, but eat wildly expensive room service…but a few months ago she was homeless and stuck sleeping at the hospital? Are we supposed to believe that she’s so quirckly odd about her huge trust fund and money that she’d violate hospital policy and…I dunno…let the trust fund money pile up? Or are the writers hoping that we just forgot about that plotline now that she’s starting a potentially doomed marriage to George?

(Give me this every month and I wouldn't be crashing in the hospital, but again, that's just me...)

Speaking of George, it’ll be interesting to see how he deals with the whole Callie v. Izzie triangle. When it happened I had extra high hopes because:

1. Callie tells George, in the midst of their fight Izzie likes him

2. He shows up to talk with Izzie with a bottle of whiskey, and then invites her to drink.

I hated the “blackout” aspect (despite some good material coming out of it) because the events of the previous episode hinted that George knew what he was doing. He wanted to get drunk so he could potentially have an excuse (in my experience, if you’ve been drunk quite a few times, you know if you blackout or not, and what amount and types of booze achieve these results) to cheat, and, more damning for George, wanted Izzie to get drunk with him, thus increasing his chances of getting some “supermodel”-level ass.

Even when the show was pissing me off back in the fall, I liked what they were doing with Karev. Credit to the writers and the actor at taking a basic “asshole with a heart of gold” archetype and doing kickass stuff with it. On the other hand, now that he’s the perfect guy, Dr. Sheppard doesn’t seem to have anything to do, but beg to have sex with Meredith, and worry about her, and then get castigated for worrying about her. While I know offering advice to a fictional character is about as useful as trying to get an honest answer from a non-under oath high-ranking Bush Administration figure, I can say this to Derek: don’t get caught up in trying to be the “perfect boyfriend”, it’s a game you can’t win. Don’t mistake knowing a good bit about her, for knowing her better than she knows herself. Because “the one that got away” hurts a little, but “the one you pushed away (even with good intentions” hurts a hell of a lot more. (And yes, I may as well wave the red flag and say "I'm trying to work out a personal issue via addressing a fictional character here.)

On a related Thursday note: Scrubs seems a bit off to me this season, and I can’t place why (though the clip show didn’t help). I hope they can bounce back, or they'll have a short final season like the OC.

30 Rock and What About Brian, two shows I started watching this year and dig the hell out of, are both “on the bubble” renewal wise. Brian has a season finale next week, I recommend watching (especially if you have a Neilson box), and keep your eyes peeled for online petitions. It worked for Arrested Development…

And even though they’re shooting parts of it in Atlanta, and it stars Laura Prepon (who was one of the best non-Red Foreman things on That 70s Show and yet this is her first show since, whilst Wilmer Valderrama has parlayed his T70sS stint—and dating Lindsay Lohan prior to the multiple rehab stints methinks—into a terrible MTV show and movie roles…seriously Hollywood: what the hell?) I just haven’t given October Road a chance. I’m no fan of critics, but they universally ripped this show from the beginning, and the plot point mentioned in one review (the protagonist’s mean book publishers wouldn’t let him change the names of real people in his novel to other names? If this is true, Writer’s Guild of America memberships or not, no one on the show has worked in publishing or even, read the disclaimer works of fiction have about names on the page facing the title page.) But the real reason is my aforementioned 7am-4pm Mon-Fri schedule, which, coupled with the fact that both LOST and What About Brian wait until 10pm to start…well, I don’t know if I can stay up and watch the show. And I have some qualms about that, because, potentially sneaky editor/publisher issues aside, this sounds like a show right in my wheelhouse. First, there’s a protagonist who’s a writer only slightly older than me (ok, see, here you can call me self-absorbed) who ran away from his past and now has to deal with it. It’s likely about second chances in relationships (a great tv staple). It’s got people in Boston Red Sox hats (hopefully also spewing some “Yankees suck”-type diatribes too). All that and Laura Prepon. It’s getting a shot this week, even if it’s via TiVo…