THE SNOOZE BUTTON OF LIFE
THE SNOOZE BUTTON OF LIFE
I finally finished “Three Junes.” It’s not as sucktacular as it was in the first thirty pages, yet that really is the best I can say for it.
But this passage really resonated with me:
Pull yourself together and live. Live: a command I received explicitly some time ago and try to respect for all the privilege it gives me. Never mind that it often feels like a burden I’d rather stow in an attic with the rash luxury, the true luxury, of saving it for some undetermined season in the future.
More and more often lately I’ve been beseiged by the same impulse. As I fritter away the last days of my roaring twenties decade, the call to get up, grow up and get a life has gotten just loud enough to break through the sounds of Britney Spears on my ipod. The second album, naturally.
All my friends are off and coupled, some have even multiplied. But, Dawn, as ever remedial in mathematics, struggles on with her own schizophrenic, frivolous demands with little care for others. But I know it cannot always be this way.
Nor do I wish it to be.
I want the successful, fulfilling career and the family of my own choosing and the children and the home and the SL 500.
I just need another few minutes or so.
Just a while more of sleeping until 11, playing card and board games until the sunrise, catching up on a Season’s worth of Smallville and turning the AC up to the maximum setting, so that I can still wrap myself up in my comforter even on the hottest summer nights.
What I wouldn’t give for just a couple more days of memos dashed off in the middle of the night to meet the final, final “first thing in the morning” deadline of irate bosses and the mindless monotony of document review for which I am paid blindingly handsomely.
Yes, I want to live. I do. Just, not right now.
December 31st, 1969 at 7:00 pm
Isn’t it odd to see just how many folks in the 30-something Columbia crowd (including its satellites such as me) are still snoozing?
June 26th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Hey, 30 is the new 25. Don’t rush. It’ll all be there in 5 years too (right around the time many couples you know will be divorcing).
June 26th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
Don’t rush.
So not a problem.
June 26th, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Yeah. I always said I was waiting for the second round on the divorced guys. Worked out ok for me.
June 27th, 2006 at 3:56 am
so long as there’s time for brunches in red hook and cupcake challenges, it seems to me you’ve been squeezing in a good amount of living. ps. don’t let the man get you down.
June 27th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
OK, Alceste, you win - no more hitting the snooze button.