I was at work today and I heard Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" playing lightly on the radio, background music. I reached out my arm toward the volume wheel, turned it clockwise, turned it up, inhabited this song for a brief moment. I was in Florida and still in college. I was in a dorm or in a car, but the sun was shining and I had an enthusiasm toward this life that is absent lately. I was young, younger in a lot of ways. Fleetwood Mac hit me hard in those years. It was a a hippyish school I was at. We didn't wear shoes and held dance parties outside. We would go down to the Bay on mushrooms to watch the sunset. I was in love with so many boys at this point. I was so sexually inexperienced and dreamed about love a lot. I drank the fruity St. Ides that we purchased at the Shell station we would always walk to. The airport was right next to our campus and during my first year, that time before 9/11 and excessive security, I would go do my all night studying and readying at an airport gate, would sit far away from any of the TVs playing CNN. This band really, really hit me hard during this time. I cried a lot to these songs and played them loud and dreamed about life. This is magic music. Those opening chords of this song send chills down my spine.
The moment was brief and too soon I was back at work, back at this boring job in this office with no windows. I didn't always used to be so boring, I thought. I am waking up from winter. I am also finally coming out of this long chain of colds I have had. I wish there were other things I could do and I am a bit unnerved by turning thirty in a couple months and thinking about where my life is at this point. I am also getting my ass kicked in what are probably good ways by these thoughts. I am thinking about things I need to do, doing at least some of those things, and seriously intending to do the other ones. Time is flying by so, so quickly. Somehow it is already mid-April. Somehow it is already 2011. Somehow I am turning 30 in June.
I want a new job but that dream has to wait because of this European vacation this summer, that I am very doubtful any job that might hire me would allow me to take two weeks off in July. That is discouraging, especially so since my closest remaining friend at my job, who has worked there as long I have, is leaving in a week, making me feel more and more like I have overextended my time there, that I need to be moving on, getting on with my life.
Another thing that is contributing to these thoughts is my recent viewing of the British TV series, "Pulling," which I really enjoyed a great deal. It approaches near-brilliance at times. I could not stop watching it, plowed through the entire series in two days. It's a version of "Sex and the City" if the looking glass had shattered, the series following three thirtysomething single women who still party like they're in their young twenties, but who don't have successful careers and are hardly glamorous, and who seem to have not really grown up much. The show also straddles humor and tragedy in this really awkward and brave way that I can't think of too many other TV shows that do. In tone, it slightly reminded me of "Party Down," which also successfully managed to be a comedy and yet still retain these same intense and depressing moments wherein questions about life in the 21st century and aging are raised and maybe not answered, but at least they are raised for you to ponder. And I have been pondering them. I have been wondering at what point my life becomes the lives of these characters, whether it in fact already has, or whether I still might have some time to try to get my act together.
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