A Lifetime of NYC

 

New York City is awesome. It is to me at least. I've been going there once every three months for the last 2+ years, yet it feels like I've spent a large chunk of my life living there. And, in some weird way, I have.

Last August marked my two-year mark being cancer-free, but the confirmation of that freedom was accentuated by Monday's CAT scan which officially cleared me. It felt like a homecoming of sorts. The always-impressive Dr. G greeted me with his usual 'let me soak my hands with Purell before shaking your hand so we can all be squeaky clean' before telling me the good news. He then recapped what I'd been through, and reminded me that, from now on, the chances of getting sick again drop significantly. It was a relief, it always is. Despite the fact that I sometimes feel like that part of my life ended two years ago, I still get anxious to see the results. Even though it's another three years until I'm officially "cured", it feels good to keep surviving every day.

I do miss my badass skinhead look.

 

Another one of the things I love about New York is the fact that you can find pretty much anything there, and that's what I did Wednesday night. I went out to a bar with my friend Xavier where we had previously dominated the ruit table for hours three months ago thanks to our Gettysburg preparation. However, we weren't so lucky this time around. We got knocked out in the first game against a guy who goes there every week (and has done so for the last four years). We took solace in the fact that our late-game baskets burst their over-confidence bubble and made them focus. Nevertheless, we were disappointed. We decided to make the best of the night by walking around for an hour and had a great life talk about girls, job applications, college, job rejections, and food (basically a summary of every 22 year-old guy's life). We even got an early preview of the parade:

 

 

 

 

Xavier expressing his love for multi-racial goldfish.

 

The rest of the week was just as good. Thanksgiving was pretty low-key. Supermarket turkey with family can be just as good, and Friday I got my culture fix with Dvorak's New World Symphony(a masterpiece best known as the soundtrack for Ridley Scott's masterpiece: Bread) played by the New York Philharmonic and they were outstanding. The week in the city was capped off by a classic Saturday night of Mexican food, margarita pitchers, and getting to see other Gburg grads surviving the post-grad life.

The week was an overall win and it was a celebration of what the city has offered me. It reminded me of how our experiences create not only who we are, but also a template for us to go forward with. And just as scary as the uncertainty of the future can be, there is a certain sense of comfort in knowing that one can be living in a brand new canvas the next day.

Kind of like this postmodern rendering of Karl in the city.

Still Unemployed

So I decided to start a blog to deal with the somewhat mundane and boring life of a post-college lifestyle without a job, but I don't have much to complain about. I haven't exactly been vegetating in my couch for months upon end the way many college graduates do upon entering the ever-dreaded "real world", but I haven't exactly figured out any long term plans yet.

I'm not gonna lie, I had a kick-ass summer. I had an enjoyable part-time job, ate a lot of wings, drank a lot of booze, and basically partied with my Gburg friends on a regular basis. It was sort of like a last hurrah, encapsulating my entire college career in a very brief three-month period of reckless shenanigans. But it was still different.

Although I was still coasting through the carefree rides of a college playground, I was facing a dead end after that. Whereas many of my buddies had a sweet entry-level job, a PhD within sight, or even a year or two of college left, all I had was rejection upon rejection after hundreds of job applications and somewhat ambiguous plans for starting grad school on September 2013. Although I am now pretty much at that stage, with the exception of being around Gettysburg for a little longer and the new GREs under my belt, it all seems like an uphill battle from here on.

To quote a classic cliche, this period of stasis is both a gift and a curse for recent college grads like myself. On the one hand, it feels like this is the only moment in life where I can take a break from literally everything: no school, no work, no Greek life, no stress. My appreciation for life has never been greater than now, with this much freedom, and I doubt it ever will be again. Yet there is still the fear of uncertainty that continues to drag me down and linger on. The same fear of failure that existed when filling out college applications, taking exams and anticipating graduation are still very much alive. Even with this post, the ambiguity that exists within me right now is hard to explain or define, which is why I'll end this on an abrupt note. Until next time, when things are hopefully clearer than now, early September 2012, three and a half months after living my first twenty-one plus years in a world of structure.