Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

Death March

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I don’t like graduation ceremonies. I never have. Not since kindergarten, at least.

For me, the excitement of a thing comes when it’s really over. In high school, i had to go to two more days of class after my graduation ceremony; it wasn’t really over yet. I was sour at graduation, grimacing in pictures and grudgingly displaying my diploma case, which did not yet contain that immortal document.

I woke up later than i meant to today, though i wound up meaning to wake up late. The apartment looks like a war zone between IKEA and Home Depot, as last night Elise hung drapery brackets while i threaded her maddeningly complicated sexy blue sewing machine. The obsessive organization of our first week has given way to a more laissez-faire approach to apartment decorating, where we move things closer to their presumed destination incrementally in case they find some other suitable home on the way. It’s fun. I want to stay here and work on it.

I finished my last graduation requirement last Friday at 10:03AM. I went through all the emotions that day – the glee, the sudden sense of freedom, the irrational tears. Today is an afterthought; i am already apart from the Drexel family. I know the week was meant for getting your requirements in order and moving out, but i got my life in order and moved on. I don’t want to go back to that gym to sit and listen to Taki – i have earned the right to avoid it.

But, otherwise, what would they take pictures of?

I Thought Wrong

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I thought … A few weeks between the end of school and the beginning of work… sounds like a life of leisure!

Little did i know.

I don’t think i’ve had five minutes of downtime so far, and the closest i’ve come to leisure is drilling the top harmony part of “Granted” for half an hour while Elise watched in bemusement. None of the dozens of CD reviews or decadent acappella arrangements i had been planning. Half of the friendly get-togethers i had scheduled. Plenty of lifting things i did not know i could lift two weeks ago, and subsequent showers.

I am determined that this is our adult apartment. We will have adult things. We will organize things in an adult way. I bought a very adult tooth brush holder at BB&B that’s a perfect blend of stainless steel and imitation porcelain, and it gives me a little thrill every time i walk past the bathroom door.

Every time i think we are settled i unsettle something. The new taller-than-us bookcase upset multiple neatly packed boxes. The router had me dragging computer parts around the room in circles. The front door is currently barricaded with hundreds of dollars of unbuilt IKEA furniture, necessitating shuffling of ladders and shopvacs in the kitchen.

I love it. The first space i have a complete command over. And no television. And now DSL! And a toothbrush holder! I am nearing the pinnacle of delight.

Now if i could only find five minutes to enjoy it.

Second Floor Zero

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Funny how I miss blogging the most when I absolutely cannot do it.

Sitting here over a belated dinner of cold pizza and Cruzan Jumbie Brew at my meticulously cleaned and reorganized desktop, I suspect that ours was the smoothest move in the history of University City.

We discovered on Sunday that the previous tenants in our new apartment had moved out a day early, meaning we would have full access to our new home on Monday, a day earlier than we had planned. Monday was originally meant to be a day of packing – topping off boxes and putting them into the truck, with the brunt of the assault on the new apartment coming on Tuesday morning while I did shuttle-runs to campus to attend class.

Instead, Elise had her entire apartment packed into the truck and moved into our new home before I could even get to taking apart my desk. Moving the majority of my massive pile of belongings into the truck took only an hour and twenty minutes, and unloading less than a third of that. This largely owed to the fact that we have some of the best friends in the world. Ten of them, at various points in the day, not to mention several calls we received from other friends, who we sadly turned away, as we were already done.

It was unstressful, though I managed to hurt myself by powerlifting the wrong air conditioner. There were even highlights… the cheer that went up from our movers when I said I would cater their alchoholic needs after Elise offered to buy lunch… Craig and I serenading Kate with PDQ Bach’s “How Many Psychiatrists” after she jinxed herself into breaking a lightbulb… a hilarious but quite poignant conversation about the apocalyptic move that left Lindsay, Erika, and I as roommates, and how Lindsay flew to New York but could not come back, how all of the cars pulled over to the side of the road as she drove to the airport, listening to their radios, and how Jack and I huddled around the television, searching for clues.

Moving is changing – changing your environment, which can sometimes change yourself. I already feel different, without a stack of toiletries on my desk and guitars on my bed. I feel, finally, like everything in my life really does have a place.

Including me.

A Fitting Fate

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Fitting that my last week of college is pretty much going to be an unmitigated string of all-nighters (and, for that matter, all-dayers). I’ve been working my ass off to get things completed the past few weeks, but i fear that with graduation in sight i’ve become a little too detail oriented, a move that is absolutely killing my ability to get anything done in a respectable amount of time.


I have five half-finished papers sitting here half-finished, my floor is littered with small items that haven’t managed to be packed yet (and i’m due for truck-picking-up in about two hours), and the new site is being held together with a virtual duct-tape of on-the-fly PHP and code stolen from various bits of the CK archive (tell me if you find anything broken, okay?).

Not to mention the critical assessment i have due tomorrow, the Senior Project revisions i have due on Wednesday (did i mention i’m getting an A), the Senior Project presentation i have to do on Thursday, and the umpteen past-due articles for Ron’s class. Oh, and some exit-interview mumbo-jumbo.

I really shine under the pressure of a deadline.

I’m Telling You For The Last Time

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This is the last weekend of my life as i have come to know it.

I have this way of always wanting to do the thing that stands three steps ahead of me rather than the one i have to do at the moment. In class i want to be playing guitar, playing guitar i want to be playing City of Heroes, and playing CoH i want to be working on The Mother-Daughter Dyad in Duras and Kincaid.

Just like turning cards in a game of solitaire, some things keep getting dealt past, flashing by as the next trio of cards are flipped. In solitaire, you desperately seek a home for the cards between you and your object. In my life, i desperately hurtle towards deadlines.

This week is a series of deadlines. By Friday, my life will have ended.

My room is teeming with boxes half-packed in anticipation of moving out of what was truly my “college apartment.” They need to be done by Monday morning. By Tuesday night i will have gone from from living relationally on my own to sharing each “good morning” and “good night” with another person.

I am frantically building a completely new website from scratch for the first time in years. It will be at once like and unlike this one. And orange. It is for a class — one of ten assignments pending in my four courses. At 3:20 PM on Thursday, i will attend the last class of my college career. If all of my assignments are in by Friday, i will qualify to graduate.

So, you see, my life is ending. When i wake up on Saturday i will be in my new apartment, in a different bed, in the strange sensations of being free from the pressure of college. I will be in a new life; finally an adult. Perhaps i had the opportunity to become one sometime before now, but i kept dealing past it.