my alternate life as a pharmacist

So things are looking up here, except for the brief periods of panic when they look down again. I've been riding my bike a lot recently, which is really nice. During the nearly eight year hiatus when i forgot how to ride a bike, i frequently said that i wanted to be a bike rider. Not just ride a bike, you know, but be the kind of person who rides a bike. And slowly but surely i am becoming that person. My new goal is to make friends with a bunch of bike punks and anarchists, and thanks to jane's incredible friend of friend making skills (she's so good at meeting people and then making friends with their friends. which is nice especially when said friends are generous bartenders at expensive bars) i'm very close to meeting that goal.

plus the bike riding makes the pointless and boring job a gagillion times more bearable. except on days like today, when it's raining and i can't ride to work and i can't even leave the office during lunch and i spend the day at one of two desks about fifty feet apart. yay!

In that it's almost thanksgiving, which is generally followed closely by xmas and then new years, i've come to grips with the fact that i probably won't get a non temp job until new years. and that fact, combined with the fact that i'm not really interested in the jobs which i'm applying to and are not hiring me, has led me to an incredible new plan, which unlike all earlier plans cause it doesn't make me want to cry.

plan: work stupid temp jobs as much as possible while saving money and then in march go to chiapas and travel from san cris to managua with my friend yakira interviewing communities in resistance for english language documentary which we will jointly produce and which will remind us and other american leftists that millions of people have been living under corrupt governments waging horrible wars and crushing poverty, but they have created awesome projects of creative resistance and we can too.

it's really liberating to realize that even with my rent and relationship, i really can drop everything and go and work on an interesting and inspiring project with people i love. and ok, it's not dropping everything, since i need to save $1200 at least first and i'll still have an apartment and a temp agency to come back to, but i suddenly feel free in a way i haven't in a while.

but then i'm seized with this terrible voice (which sounds a lot like the voice of my father and grandparents) saying that if i have a year on my resume of just shitty temp work i'll be shooting myself in the foot and totally unemployable for the rest of my life and don't i want my children to be able to go to a good school like i did.

but honestly i've been living in fear of them/arguing with them for most of my life now and i haven't yet said "gee, why did i follow my passions instead of the their sensible advice."
i mean in hindsight i think that even my grandfather would aggree that wesleyan, nicaragua, and chiapas have probably made me a happier and better person than haverford, spain and pharmacy school would have.

wish me luck
rachel

money city blues

today at lunch i walked over to dupont circle and cried for half and hour. about the election, about andrew, about my job and my life. i tried to stay above the fray in this election. kerry was not my candidate any more than any of the democrats. i irritated my liberal housemates with my reiteration of the sins of clinton (who they claim to have genuinely liked during his presidency as well as in the bush induced afterglow). but faced with four more years of bush, and the knowlege of the broad mandate given to him by half of the population, i feel overwhelmed.

and not just about the country. i am a poster child for the quarterlife crisis. four or five years ago i was a part of a movement for global justice that felt so right. i felt so genuinely a part of some larger network of radical activists who shared my values and were fighting for real change. i was a street fighting, prison loving rebel.

and here i am now feeling so isolated from all of that. i ended up in dc for god knows what reason, i have a year lease in an apartment i pay $450 a month to live in, i just lost my health insurance and i sit in an office where no one acknoleges my presence all day. i have no activist community in dc and am too depressed to reach out and find one. i am so hamstrung by the combination my fear and suspision of sectarian leftist groups/well meaning liberal ngos and my creeping hipster cynicism that i find it almost impossible to take part in any mass gathering/vigil/march/protest. i am terrified that i am already sinking into that shitty world of adult complacency. already i work a job that i'm too poor to quit to pay a rent in a city that i occupy mostly by watching tv and drinking. this is everything i never wanted to be and i can't figure a way to get out of it.