that I turn into a diary because I don't have the desire/energy anymore to comment on this boisterous world,
It is a difficult thing to be 24. So difficult. You don't even know. Especially when you're in Kankakee where 14-year-old boys and 40-year-old nursing assistants stare at you for prolonged, unapologetic minutes every time you walk into a coffee shop (you know what I'm talkin' 'bout, Camille. They don't mean anything by it, I know. It's perfectly polite to stare in East Central Illinois, as it is in Kenya-or so I've heard). Especially when your dog would rather crawl under the bed where he can't be reached and lay there for hours at a time contemplating his own dog-loneliness. BUCK UP, BISCUIT! You're not helping me out here, buddy.
I'm just kidding. It's not that bad. I just picked up Nine Stories again (I know, I'm insane) and found to my delight that I'd never before read the perfectly delightful story Just Before the War with the Eskimos. And, I've been reading people's stories about their experiences with the Peace Corps, and realized that I'm very glad to be sitting here so privileged and bored. But, not really. I'd really rather be crying with the frustration of eating rotten goat meat for a twelfth day straight, or attempting to climb a mountain full of spiders hiding among wildflower thorns, or some such thing. The frustrations of stasis are much worse. It makes you feel pretty bitter and helpless to squander your youth (and what little I've got of youthful energy) waiting and getting nowhere. I also have dresses with nowhere to wear them, but at least I can still wear them, you know?
What I'd really like is to be in Haiti. But I have nothing to offer Haiti. I've somehow just now realized that my degree was only for me (Oh...I have to go back to school, don't I?).
On a positive note, the more I talk to fellow unemployed 20-somethings, the more I realize that we aren't really as complacent as I often think. Most people I've talked to would really rather be doing something to help people--it's just that it's so hard to know where to start when non-profits aren't hiring and this whole system of urban/suburban living in the U.S. is set up to make us work for what we want, and not for what our neighbors need. Please, God, don't let me work a corporate job while giving a portion of my income to charity. I've got to figure out a way to harness 20-something capital-less optimism... should I make an idealist.org-facebook? Hmm, nope, it turns out that a minor in Information Technology Studies merely asks you to postulate about the social impacts of information systems, rather than teaching you anything of programming or web design.
Well, there is the Peace Corps. Apparently I'm going to have to leave home again. But it just takes so much energy to start your life over again every single year. I don't want to do that anymore. I'm all for making new friends and all, but I've got such good old ones. Peace Corps should have an option where you take five of your closest unemployed friends with you to work on the same project together. Except, that's not enough, and they won't do it anyway. Unemployed friends tend to be wishy-washy. They bathe in wish-wash. Can I bring a whole city with me? See, I grow sick of independence. Alas.
Does this all come down to dollars and cents, you ask? It does. It is clearly a case of not having a room of one's own from which to start something. I will consider appealing to wealthy relatives, or to the generous, debt-ridden state of Illinois.
Someone give me something else to think about, please.
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