"...all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be..." -Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
You can say that again! Hey, looks like someone already did (looks like Dan Schmitz is running with an awesome crowd: he can identify with the likes of Princeton the puppet and me!). I can name at least 6 friends who are A. college graduates, B. back living with 'the folks' (or 'grand-folks'), and C. currently looking for a job or are presently underemployed. We can spend our time getting angry at the economy for screwing us over (hello! we have degrees! shouldn't we be squeaking by the uneducated folk? or are our degrees our enemies right now: potential employers know we'll bolt as soon as things pick up and we can move on up?), or maybe we need to just grin and bear it and do the best we can. Perhaps that won't be in the US: this economy is driving a lot of people to look for gigs overseas. This in itself is a good thing; hey, is the crappy economy actually encouraging globalization? (Some economist somewhere should look into that...) I'm definitely a part of that exodus: I'm doing a phone interview for the Peace Corps next week!
Maybe I sound a little too sunny, but I've always been an optimist. And fortunately (read: miraculously), just when things were beginning to look really bleak, I got a job (and my first day of training was on Veteran's Day, no less...tying back into that lost generation thing...everything's connected...). Let me repeat that incredible news: I got a joerghb!! After only about a month of looking, and it's a great job too: I'm not flipping burgers, folding shirts, or dressed like an elf and to top it all off, it's actually a resume-builder--something that ties into my future career goals! Many have said that I'm lucky. I'm becoming more and more aware of that.
Meanwhile, I'm eating my way through the world, in a very Portland way: food carts!! I read about them last year in the New York Times article (here, if you insist, but I'm sure anyone who's anyone has already seen it, and I already linked to it on facebook), but had never eaten at them, until now! Yesterday it was a chicken schnitzelwich at a Czech cart, and today it was an old favorite: a lamb gyros at a Greek cart. I'm also 'eating' A Moveable Feast right now, and even though I'm slightly less than halfway done, it has already skyrocketed to '2nd-favorite-book-of-all-time' status. The title is perfect: it's chewy. Each chapter is a delicious morsel; a combination of romantic Parisian reminiscences and frank 'here's how I did it' advice on being a writer. Anyone who's been to Paris, is planning a trip there, or just loves the city of love needs to read this book! (I've especially been remembering lazy sunny days spent lounging next to the Rhone last year in good company with delicious wine and insanely incredible food...Steve, Zandra, Lauren, Zandra, Ruth, Becky, Cotes du Rhone, big fat cherries, goat cheese: you know who you are!)
Hemingway's famous admonition to "write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know" is contained therein, among others. That, in concert with the professions of Project Runway contestants, encourages me. Writing isn't my profession, but it's my passion, and I know I'll always be doing this, even after long days at work (couldn't resist mentioning my fabulous job! yet again!), in the middle of the night, and with no loftier goals than personal satisfaction.
I read on the bus and Max to work and home again. Talk about a typical Portland experience! Riding Trimet you see a true cross-section of society: poor people, environmentally-conscious people, (not mutually exclusive categories, btw), knitting people, reading people, people grooving to their iPods, smelly people, drunk people, commuters, high school kids, thugs, hipsters, bicyclists, their bikes, families. Working downtown, commuting on public transportation: I love feeling like a Portlander in a realer way than I ever have before!
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