1. Fools’ Gold
Our job is on two floors, with two spots where people occasionally leave tasty treats. So naturally my April Fools joke was to put a sign on the third floor that said “Cookies on the fourth floor”, and one on the fourth floor directing people to the third.
Everyone enjoyed it.
2. Reading Habits
We have too many magazines. We get New Yorker, Funny Times, and the Economist from Flame’s dad, and I started getting Scientific American on my own. Flame reads them a day after getting them, but my unread parts keep piling up. The New Yorker stays in the bathroom, Economist is folded up for random minutes in my bag, and pieces of the Funny Times end up all over the apartment. I read economics after work, philosophy before bed, SciAm on my phone after Flame goes to sleep, Baha’i writings before she gets up.
3. Senioritus?
I never had a low-drive phase after I got accepted to colleges, but I’m feeling a bit of one now. I still have my after-work coding and studying economics and time with Flame, but the backlog of other projects and emails and reading just keeps getting longer. Is school as immersive as I remember, or will it now just be like a different kind of job? Maybe I need a vacation from all the anticipation.
4. House Breaking
In the week since I decided to move to NYC, Flame and I have broken three glass cups, a couple plates, a full bottle of liquor, and the garbage bag they all went in. Each time we shrugged, “Less stuff we have to move!” but I think it might be getting out of control. In other eerie household destruction, our apartment is quickly greening itself by saving the electricity that powered our entryway light, saving heat that escaped from a window we used to be able to open, and saving water from our kitchen faucet that now runs at a dribble.
5. A New Life Goal
Since before college, I’ve had the life goal of attaining Nirvana. What’s the point of life if not to win? But then I realized the joys of living fully, and I’ve been trying to resolve these two contradictory aspirations. I just discovered the answer a couple days ago: I will become a Bodhisattva! I will eternally return to perch on the edge of enlightenment, helping any who wish to the other shore until every creature in existence has attained it before I go.