Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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My life is an extended commercial break in the middle of a lazy Sunday night movie… i keep expecting the show to go on at the end of each content-less interval but all that appears is another insipid advertisement for what i should be doing with my life.

Every day this week I’ve left the main building at six – because i spend the latter hour of my day keeping up with my internet addiction after everyone else has left the office. When i exit the building i am always thinking “beautiful weather, no commitments, no computer to tie me down, only life ahead.” I walk the nearly two miles back to my apartment with my face towards the setting sun and when i arrive i routinely (i have a routine, already) walk to the fourth floor to drop my keys and shoes, back to the third floor to wash my hands and face, back up to the fourth floor to get changed, and back down to the third floor for a quick sip of orange juice. And then the night extends away from me in seemingly infinite repetitions of walking up and down the stairs and lying on my back staring up at the lantern lights strung across the sloped ceiling above my bed.

Last night i idly surfed through my oldest backup cd for projects i had left unfinished for a half hour before swallowing 50mg of Benadryl, ostensibly because the pollen count has been obscenely high but really because i would much rather be asleep then awake. The slumber came quick and easy and i woke up this morning with ample time to shower and get my large iced nonfat vanilla latté, and here i am back in work, waiting for the last clip in this endless commercial break so that i can get back to the show.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5540873/

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I’m not sure i could quantify our moving just in numbers, or even in words, but it involved five primary housemates, five special guest-lifters, five fabulous locations, one mom with a pre-cooked dinner, and approximately twenty motrin consumed in under four hours by three different people. Oh, and two practically moved into new apartments: one without electricity and the other without a phone. All in all it should make for an interesting weekend. But, speaking of hurdles, now i have to give our powerpoint presentation, empty my old apartment, carry it all up the stairs to my new apartment, and go back to the old apartment to drop off my keys. Oh, and carry my mattress and box spring up to the fourth floor… but i’m trying not to think of that right now.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5404296/

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That was quite a lot of melodrama for 3am, wasn’t it? The behind-the-story story is that i had just come from volunteering at the Philadelphia Folk Song Society and i was running a really high temperature but was somehow wired up and didn’t want to sleep. When i finally did go to sleep i sweat my fever out like a junky, and now i’m sortof in this disoriented haze. But, no chills, just haze. Furthermore, I’m at work, after calling out and deciding i was well enough to come in as long as i didn’t have to do any tour leading today. Bleh. Data entry here we come.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5126857/

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Of course, becoming someone is a two way street. When someone gets famous and says “some school rejected me and it changed my life” to some random interviewer, ten different thoughts shoot out in ten different directions depending on who the reader is. The most basic reaction is probably something akin to “wow, they got rejected by school. I’m shocked!”

What follows is the part that matters… is it more important that the school is that much more prestigious for turning down your favourite actor or singer, or is the school pathetic and shallow for not seeing their potential when it had been so obvious?

The thing with me was that nothing was obvious. I somehow had the idea that i could trump everyone else’s comparable scores with a slew of activities like acting and writing and volunteering, and while schools do claim to care a lot about all of that but they honestly don’t really seem to mind either way. Unless you’re submitting a portfolio, they like to hear about competing, and winning – not showcasing and performing … unless you were winning while doing that.

I was a special challenge because i was undecided about my academic major when i was applying to colleges, which was surely one of the biggest strikes against me. At Drexel, we invite undecided students to apply. We encourage it. We can help them work it out. But, some schools have no use for the indecisive, and would only take them if they’ve proved themself to be a potential nobel prize winner no matter what they major in. So, honestly, i would have had a shot at splitting my rejections in half if i had just arbitrarily picked English or Literature as my major. But, i didn’t. Oops.

The thing with me is, i’m inconsistent. I mean, i have 10 simultaneous projects up in the air at any given time, none of which are ever really getting finished or resolved. In high school, this translated into a hodge-podge of activities and B+’s instead of A’s. In retrospect, i don’t think i did anything before the age of 13 or 14 that had any definitive effect on my academic future. What it comes down to is that i need something to light a fire under me before i can be excited about anything, and back then the only things i had really were comic books and video games and reading books and nothing serious and enjoyable. As it is now I need PuppetMaster or 25/24 or taking the minutes at a big admissions meeting to light a fire under me. to keep me motivated.

However, now i have the weak excuse of passing these fires off as my continuing exploits in DIY journalism. If i didn’t have this to refer to as my way of honing my writing skills and narrative voice, what the hell would i be doing with my free time? I’m very jealous of you science types that can quantify what they’re learning and their goals so clearly. I just need to have an enthusiasm for something, and at the beginning of this Summer i said i’d ditch my guitar if i didn’t start playing this summer – for people in places other than my apartment – and i played a few times. But, it took up no effort on my part, so the guitar is getting tossed in the backseat. I have songs and voice and image but i have no drive or fire, and i don’t have anyone else to light one for me because hardly anyone else has heard these songs because i never play them because i obviously don’t have enough attention to pay to it unless i combine it with things on the internet. 25/24 was a rousing success for me even if i find the singing hideous and unlistenable; even if i somehow still haven’t finished the Best-Of CD because i keep pulling “bad” songs off of it and putting “good” songs on. But, i have failed my guitar and i feel like suddenly our little interlude has ended, and so now it is just another tool … a weapon if i hold it right.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5119833/

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NYU is who they reject, and i was rejected by them. Somewhere in that exchange of $50 and a heavy manila piece of paper with my essay about intolerance and growing up attached we agreed to define each other. NYU already knows exactly what it is because i am just one tiny speck of rejection on the wide face of their thirty thousand plus applications every year. But, i have yet to define them. To this point i have just been “peter, who did some theatre and took some advanced placement tests and didn’t get into NYU.” And, so, now i feel like i have to be something… something that represents what NYU passed up when they passed on me.

Of course, Mr. NYU didn’t really mean “You are who you reject” with any sort of positive intent other than increase in reputation. He never gave the indication that students could use their rejection to define themselves better or that they should realize that they were only being turned away because a fine institution is as much about who they admit as they are about who they don’t. There isn’t any reason to wonder about such things, and that’s why his school can afford to be nearly the most expensive place to get a degree in the entire country. He said his catchphrase and then launched into how the school targets their mailings at specific grade levels and about how they guarantee four-year housing to all students from outside of the five boroughs because none of them could ever afford to live anywhere near the school on their own.

And i was stuck on instant replay in my head, taking the meeting’s minutes down like an automaton while i wondered. He didn’t mean it as a key to self help, but i’ll be damned if i don’t use it that way. Because, i do not want to visit drexel in 10 years and hear someone say in some faceless heartless presentation that i’m the kind of student that they gobbled up 15 years ago but that now i would barely even meet the criteria to slip in the back way through our local community college. The thought of it makes me sick.

NYU and i are stuck together for life. And, if you want to get more compulsive about this than i’m being, every job and listener and reader and girl who turned me down is now saddled with me more than if they had just gave in and paid me some effort. But, the burden is on my shoulders. I’ve got to become somebody.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5119796/