Lessons from Reality Bites

it was the fall of my freshman year when i saw reality bites on the big screen (cue ethan hawke's song, "i'm nuthin'"). i was only 14, and impressionable, and honestly believed that college graudation would bring glorious nights without homework, regular card game nights with friends, and relationship tensions that would finally resolve themselves in intimate and dramatic love affairs (only after days, weeks, months, spent agonizing over the heartache of temporarily unrequited love).

it's been four years since i left my college life behind and embarked on this 20-something journey. and while i haven't helped a gay roommate come out to his parents ("PFLAG, I'm beginning to like the sound of that") or racked up hundreds of dollars in phone bills to a psychic friend, i do feel a little of that reality bites flavor in my life.

i don't know where i'm going. i don't have a job. i have to buy a car. i've got couches and bookshelves and no where to put them in my new city. i'm navigating relationships.

i thought i had a pretty good start. i took this great job, and i made great friends, and i was moving forward. i moved to chicago and my world began to move. people around me were going places, i was going places. i moved right along with them. i got a hang of it. i challenged myself to move a little faster, a little more faster, c'mon, just a bit faster now ...

that's when i chose to change my life.

in the past few weeks, i've felt as though my world is suddenly slowing, and i'm unprepared to slow with it. kind of like when running along at a 8 minute mile pace on a treadmill when the thing abruptly slows your pace to a 17 minute mile.

i'm not sure if i asked god for this or if he initiated it, but i am confident that this slow pace is good.

so should i work my butt off to find another acceptable 401k, a job with easy hours ... should i rush into finding a permanent home where i'll give myself to my work for a paycheck that buys me cds and tapastries ... should i rush through these next few weeks? oh, no, no, no.

for just a little while, i need to channel my inner troy dyer:

Troy: One of these days I'm gonna wake up, before noon.
Lelaina: Yeah right.
Troy: I'm gonna turn on the tv and there Bryant Gumble will be and he'll say, 'Today we have with us the Pulitzer-prize winning documentarian Lelaina Pierce. Lelaina, after your first film, 'Why Barbie is Bad', you seemed to have forgotten all about your best friend, Troy Dyer.'
Lelaina: Troy... who? What was that name again? Oh, right through the heart!
Troy: I'll probably be working at Whole Foods you know, playing warehouses and hanging around places like the Radio Shack screaming that I used to know you and you'll be there in the lights and all beautiful and shit.
Lelaina: Oh, Troy, no no no no no, that would never happen. They'd never HIRE you at Whole Foods.
Troy:: See Lainy, this is all we need. A couple of smokes, a cup of coffee, and a little bit of conversation. You and me and five bucks.

Yep, I want that to be my summer.

God and me and five bucks. Jon and me and five bucks. My sisters and me and five bucks.

You and me and five bucks. Amen.