Clark Gable

I listened to The Postal Service for the first time in a while tonight...and found myself bouncing along to one song in particular: Clark Gable. Like Death Cab they know how to make depressing things sound upbeat, until you really take the time to listen to them. 

I was waiting for a cross-town train in the London underground

When it struck me that I've been waiting since birth to find

A love that would look and sound like a movie so I changed

My plans and rented a camera and a van and then I called you

"I need you to pretend that we are in love again" and you agreed to

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"

And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd

I greased the lens and framed the shot using a friend as my stand-in

The script it called for rain but it was clear that day so we faked it

The marker snapped and I yelled "quiet on the set"

And then called "action!"

And I kissed you in a style that clark gable would have admired

(I thought it classic)

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"

And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd

I know you're wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the fear

That your perfect verse is just a lie you tell yourself to help you get by

Anyways, it got me thinking. I haven't got a personal life, nor do I really have time for one. Most of the time I don't notice or mind, but sometimes I stop to think about it and I wonder if I just make myself busy and tell myself I don't have time because I'm incapable of having one. I don't think I'm unworthy of being loved but nonetheless  I really think its extraordinarly difficult for me to find it. When my mom was my age, she had already met my father. 

I put my name on the degree list for Spring 2009 today. I'm really excited about it...excited to be done with many aspects to this chapter of my life. Excited to be done with bootsy professors and 4-papers-a-week madness. Excited to escape the fresh-out-of-high-school dramas. Excited to be done with homework. But I'm also a little scared of leaving school....of leaving the opportunities I may have missed, leaving the intellectual bubble that I've got going on, leaving my best friends, leaving in general. Will I look back on college and regret not having experienced more? Or will I look back on it and regret having thrown myself into so many things? 

I generally think it will be the former. But all of this has got me uncertain again...some people don't see it come out that often but I really am filled with an incredible amount of uncertainty, self-doubt and confidence issues. I've gotten pretty good at fooling myself into not acknowledging them so that I can get through life, but the more I go through this world the more I can't ignore the disconnect between what I've been trained to see and do and believe and what the cold realities of life show me. 

So what the heck will life throw at me? I don't know...but until then I'll keep trudging through, trying to find that magic balance between school, social, community, family, leadership, learning, personal and public. And if all else fails, I'll drink more tea.