Commencement

The event of beginning.

I am now commenced. Which is to say that before this magical event I was not commenced. I had not yet started. None of that counted. What freedom! What a fucking waste!

What were the past 21 years if not a commencement? What are the next fifty? The following thirty? Does life not really begin until death? I know far too many people who died before "commencement" to make that title seem anything but a trite and slightly insulting premise.

It seems almost classist in its ignorance. As if all those who did not "commence" never began their lives. Don't even get me started on "graduation"...

Anyway, the college umbilical cord has been mostly cut (but for the part where I am serving on the Board of Trustees for the next two years), and I am now set adrift to "start" my life.

But fuck y'all, I started years ago. Didn't we all?

For example. Three years ago I moved to Washington DC for two months. Yes, it was a limited experience. But for those two months I lived on my own in an apartment that I paid for out of my own pocket. I bought my own food, paid my own way for transportation, and fell flat on my face in any attempt to build my own community. Thank fucking god I had that experience.

I'm looking for an apartment. A place to put my stuff. And I want a job. Something to pay for the apartment and for food and some transportation when my bicycle is not sufficient.

I'm also looking to finally put together that bookstore I've been hinting at all year. Let's see if I can do it before next spring.

I also want to take a break. I've been going nearly non-stop for the past seventeen years in a constant cycle of academia, almost always subjected to other people's standards. The way I learned to deal with that was to set my own standards higher than theirs. I want to take a break from that, if only for a few weeks. I want to read what I want to. Write whatever. I want to watch TV all day again, like I did over the winter when I was without motivation, but I want to enjoy it. I don't want to feel that quiet desperation that nags at me when I have something else I should be doing.

Commencement is a beginning in the same sense that every change is a beginning. One might as well hold a ceremony like that for learning how to drive, reading a great novel, having the kind of conversation that gets burned into your memory, and so on.

I'm beat. I moved out of the place that I've called home for four years today and I know that I will never live there again. Oddly enough, I don't feel all mushy like I thought I would. Maybe it will hit me later. Maybe I'm not that nostalgic.