Good news, bad news

Today I’m on the delightful Meighan O’Toole’s blog, My Love for You Is a Stampede of Horses, and I was invited to be a part of an exciting worldwide photo project slated for November 4*. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I didn’t make the cut for Critical Mass. I’m thinking the only answer is to drive up to Portland and TP Shawn Records’s house. Who’s in with me?

This afternoon, before I found out about any of this, good or bad, I was in an exceedingly foul mood. (Just ask S.) I’ll spare you the details, but in my litany of ways in which my life, the human race, and the universe in general collectively suck, I mentioned how 2008 was a total bust of a year, that I’d gotten nothing done, that I’d wasted it. And then it hit me: There are two months left. Over 16 percent of the year remains. Sure, it’s not much, but it’s something. It’s time.

I was e-mailing with a friend tonight, and something she said really got me: “I am so delighted to be in my mid-30s, yet sometimes I feel like I am racing towards my own death. You know? Like OMG, I am not doing enough, and how do I take the next step, and what is that next step, and OMG did I miss it?!?!” I wrote back:

I feel all the time like I’m not doing enough. Not in an Oprah-watching overwhelmed soccer mom kind of way, but in a “Shit, there’s so much I want to do and see, and I haven’t even scratched the surface” kind of way. I used to work at a library shelving books, and I’ll never forget realizing one day that I would never, ever, ever have enough time to read all the books I wanted to read, even if I quit doing anything else and just read 24/7 for the rest of my life and lived to be 100. That was such a sobering thought. And then it hit me that I’d never walk on the moon, and I’d never win an Olympic medal, and I’d never win an Oscar. I never wanted to be an astronaut or anything, but it just dawned on me: Fuck, I’ll never walk on the moon. . . . There was a whole slew of shit that I was never going to do. And ever since then, I’ve been on a race against time.

I don’t know if I’m making clear the connection I see in these threads, but it’s about an age limit being assigned to the term emerging (read Jörg Colberg and Cara Phillips); it’s about knowing that I’m going to blink and it’ll all be over; it’s about being disappointed with myself for not getting enough done (and then being frustrated that I’m comparing myself to anyone else—read Susana Raab); it’s about feeling like half my countrymen are crazy (and realizing that they think I’m crazy, too); it’s about the hourglass running out and the future hanging in the balance; and it’s about the very real possibility that none of this even matters, and that we’re lucky if we make it to the coat closet.

October 22, 1999: Adlai Stevenson hangs in the cloakroom at the Democratic National Committee Club on Capitol Hill. Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

* If you want to be a part of it, go here for the details on how to enter the juried portion of the event and take a picture on November 4 @600 beats.