Specifically, I finally graduated, and now I’m getting ready to embark on a more serious career, which is actually what sparked my interest in firing up WordPress again and putting down my thoughts. (Hi, HR people!) I won’t name names of places I’m applying for now, for various reasons, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at some of the responses I’ve received, and the salary offerings so far — as a journalism major, I thought my life path was pretty well set: do what I love, but be broke as hell doing it. I will say that there are specific areas I’m interested in (Boston, NYC, Seattle), and the most promising responses are out of Boston and NYC so far. No matter what career path I choose, I feel a bit like I’m delaying our dreams of making it to France eventually (which I think I mentioned in my last post), but I’m excited to take my first steps toward a meaningful career, and I think for now the benefits outweigh the negatives.

Last October, Ivona and I were on our honeymoon in Antalya, Turkey, sitting in a faux Parisian café in our resort, and we made the decision to move to France. We busted out the laptop, spent hours looking into everything from the cost of housing in Aix-en-Provence (the city I used to live in) to claiming my French citizenship. We had just had our second wedding in Bulgaria, and our first honeymoon now that we could finally afford one, and it seemed fitting that we made the decision to go there together, something we had talked about as early as our first date. It was a definite motivator to finish up this year and get my degree, and it was one of the things keeping me from shooting myself at the though of another 80-100 hours a week driving a cab this summer, but as we got closer to leaving Northampton to head to the Vineyard, and looked at the costs of going to France, I realized that working another menial labor job for three intense months with no semblance of a life was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Besides, with the US immigration process being the beast that it is, things will be easier later on for us anyway.

We’re coming up on our two year anniversary, which means that aside from the horrors of just dating me, she’s endured two years of matrimonial unbliss, including my video gaming habit and constant dick jokes (not really — I’m highbrow! No, really). I know everyone says it, but I really can’t believe it has been this long. Luckily for us, we still have the same opinion of marriage that we started out with: our relationship really hasn’t changed because of the rings on our fingers, and we don’t “feel” any more married than when it first happened — which is to say we still think getting married makes more of a difference to everyone around us than it does to us. Hell, we still sometimes feel weird referring to “my wife,” or “my husband.”

Anyway, sorry to make such a rambling, newsy update with not much substance, but I had to break back into it and I’m sure some family and friends who read this will want to get an update on what’s going on. Hopefully I’ll be back on a more regular update schedule, so keep checking.

Anyway, I was supposed to be graduating, and I sort of freaked about the fact that I didn’t have a job lined up, didn’t have any money, felt like I had no prospects, etc. Now that I feel like I have a little more time, I don’t feel the pressure quite as strong as I did before, but it’s still there and I can’t help but be stressed out about it, even if it’s a sort of subconscious, subtle stress. I don’t sit here freaking about it, but it’s always lingering in the back of my mind.

Currently, Ivona and I are searching for not one, but two apartments; one on the Vineyard for the summer so we can work down there, and one in Amherst for the fall; and we’re potentially buying a used car that we found a pretty good deal for. I’m looking forward to that change, of getting out of Amherst, of having some money again, and I feel like I’m sort of sitting here waiting for that to happen. I’m almost looking forward to the insane work schedule (probably going to average 14 hours a day, seven days a week), because I know I do best when I’m constantly moving and doing things. Part of what got me into this rut is sitting around so much and not doing anything. Vicious cycle. I’m in a rut because I’m not doing anything, and I’m not doing anything because I’m in a rut.

Alex and I had a brainstorming session a couple weeks ago to work on a screenplay. We’re developing a story I had very roughly sketched out, coupled with a general theme that has been bothering both of us lately and that Alex pretty neatly summed up with the term “quarter-life crisis.” We’ll see how it goes, if it does, but lately I’ve been more and more thinking that I want to write a version of the story on my own, maybe in book form. It has less to do with my feelings about how a screenplay written with my brother would turn out, because I think we could do some great work together, and more to do with the feeling that I really want to accomplish something on my own. I feel like not many things are turning out the way I want them to, and if I really want to be a writer, I need to take it seriously and do it.

I guess that’s the state of affairs right now in my world. If any of you have some great tip or secret to getting your life back on track, please share.

I also found my old moleskine notebooks that are filled with great little notes I can expand on for material. Expect it to be a good weekend content-wise, which should make up for last night and tonight. Ivona gave me a good piece of advice on writing tonight, although it’s something I knew intuitively but was trying to ignore; I’m not giving this blog the time it deserves. I may be forcing myself to write every day, but that doesn’t mean anything if I’m writing at 10 or 11 pm every night just rushing something out there so I don’t have to pay one of you goons five dollars.

Boring post is boring. Better ones tomorrow.

One of the things that has sort of bothered me lately, and especially since I got married, is the notion of my own mortality. Personally, I believe when I die, that’s it, nothing left. And yeah, that’s depressing as shit, but it’s what I believe. This never really bothered me so much until I realized I had someone to spend the rest of my life with. The last few days I’ve been thinking about it more than usual; we’ve been able to spend some really good times together lately that have led me to be pretty freaked out about what would happen if I die, or if she died, and which would be worse. On the one hand, if I died, I’d never see or touch or hear her again. But I’d be dead, so I wouldn’t know the difference. On the other, if she died, I’d have to live without her, which is pretty unimagineable right now. If I had to choose which of us would live, it would be a tough choice. I wouldn’t want her to die, obviously, but I know how messed up I’d feel if she died and wouldn’t want to put her in that situation. I guess I can take solace in the fact that I’ll probably never be in that position.

A few years ago, I didn’t even think I was capable of feeling certain emotions, let alone some as strongly as I do with Ivona. I feel now that no matter what happens in life, I have a partner to face everything with. I guess these fears of death or worrying about things is my way of being cautious. Life seems so great and perfect around her that I’m almost psyching myself up for the impending fall. Who knows, we may end up living to 90 and having successful, happy lives, but one of us is going to die first. Maybe Alzheimer’s isn’t such a tragic disease at all… Sure, it’s tragic for those around you, but it probably makes dying a hell of a lot easier if you can’t remember their names or anything about them.

I had a dream the other night, that I was in another country and was kidnapped and tortured. It became clear that I was going to die, and worse than the pain or that knowledge was the feeling that I wouldn’t see Ivona again. Stuff like that freaks me out more than anything I’ve ever thought about or worried about before. I used to have those thoughts about my twin brother, Alex, and still do from time to time, but I’ll admit marriage changes your focus a little bit. (Sorry Alex, you have to share the number one spot for favorite person in my book these days.)

I’m sure it’s just a temporary thing and I’ll stop thinking about it so much soon. Maybe writing about it will help put my mind at ease. I think I just need to tell myself that thinking about it now isn’t going to do any good. I don’t think that thinking about death at 24 is going to do much in the way of preparing me for when the time comes.

Anyway, sorry to be so morbid. Next post will have kittens and rainbows, I promise.

That’s about it, I guess. Nothing earth-shatteringly amazing, but an all-around good day. But let’s be honest, I just posted so none of you vultures will ask for money.

Tonight I got out of my rut of social inactvity – my buddy T.J. was supposed to do that last weekend with his wine and cheese party, but it was delayed until tomorrow due to snow, so my only human contact for the last week was Ivona. Don’t get me wrong, that’s pretty ok with me, and I’ve enjoyed watching episode after episode of The Office while she’s been at work, but I realized today how much I’ve missed varied social interaction this past month; it was great to meet new people in a new environment, although I’ll admit it takes some warming up to new surroundings for me. Alex has probably noticed this more than anyone, but I think in the past couple years I’ve become increasingly uptight, and it really helps me unwind to go out and have a few drinks and relax a little bit. I don’t mean to say I need a couple drinks to relax and talk with people, but it helps. (I’M NOT AN ALCOHOLIC I SWEAR.)

So, anyway, I met Ivona and her co-workers at the Toasted Owl in Northampton. I’ll admit I can be pretty bad with names, and the ones I remember I won’t attempt to spell (have I mentioned I’ve had more than a few drinks tonight?). We got some wings and I had a couple Blue Moons. A girl from another Smith office just got engaged, and I felt a little insecure about the size of her engagement ring compared to Ivona’s (non-existant) diamond, but oh well. At least I can take solace in the practicality of our marriage.

Another of her co-workers just bought a house with her boyfriend, and it made me realize how much I really don’t want to be where she is right now; I don’t want to be buying a house and settling down. I want to live out of a backpack and travel. I want to spend a year in a country where I don’t speak the language and make the most out of it. I want to do whatever the hell I want without having to worry about a rent or mortgage payment or an electric bill. I want to join the Peace Corps and spend two years helping people and learning about a different culture. And if nothing else, I want to do that because I have no idea what I can do for a living with a journalism degree in a dying newspaper industry. I want to do all that with Ivona, and I’m grateful for the fact that if I decided to do all this tomorrow, she’d support me.

After the after-work happy hour, Ivona and I returned home. I did some work on this site and Ivona took a nap, and Alex called and said he wanted me to come out. I was hesitant at first; when I get into the habit of not being social it’s hard to break out of it, but he worked out a ride for me and given that he’s moving soon I didn’t feel like I could say no, and I’m glad I didn’t. When he moves, it’ll be only the second time we’ve lived in different time zones. I guess this isn’t a huge deal to regular siblings, but for identical twins it’s different. We’ve had our differences in the past few years, and gone in different directions with our lives, but he’s still my twin brother and I’m going to miss him. I’m determined to actually get this screenplay we talk about writing at least underway, and I’m hoping my Hollywood contacts will get us somewhere once it’s done.

(Note: Finished this post today, 1/17/09.)

The rest of the night wasn’t terribly eventful, so I’ll skip the details, but I beat the wingman role like a dead horse played wingman for Alex and Greg perfectly enough that I ended up stuck in conversation with one of the girls long after Alex and Greg had aborted the mission. It’s probably just as well that she’s engaged, because she was much hotter from across the bar than up close.

Even though it wasn’t much of a night out, it felt great to get out and do something, and I’m looking forward to the wine and cheese party tonight. With most of my friends gone from Amherst already, I’ve settled into an almost agoraphobic lifestyle. It’s not that I’m afraid of going out, just that I sort of feel like, hey, what’s the point, you know? But then when I finally do it, I’m glad I did. I’ll probably go out even less once Alex is gone, though, so I should get in that quality bar time while I can.