My former best friend’s birthday was a week ago and I only just realized this and thought how crazy it is that someone who meant so much to me in so many different ways over the past couple of years is that level of gone now - at least, from my consciousness. My subconscious has other ideas on the matter. Well, I guess I saved money since I didn’t get him a gift. That’s good.

I’m excited for the world-ending storm because it means a weekend spent curled up with the boy, watching movies and eating junk food and napping without feeling any guilt since we can’t actually go outside and be active. The idea of non-movement sounds so good but I know about seven hours into forced confinement I’ll start going stir-crazy. Then I’ll start over-analyzing all of my life choices and I’ll get moody and cranky and compare everything to my terrible time in London and decide I’ve done everything in my life completely wrong and there’s no way of fixing it and I’m forever alone and DOOMED. This is the latest train of thought that has been popping up every so often to turn me into a big messy pile of human. Now that every decision is officially my own and every related consequence is also mine, everything seems a whole lot more definitive and irreversible and big and college feels like some distant event that may not have even happened.

When I get all soppy and regretful I like to make lists in my head of all the older real people I know or have heard of who have gotten through the same situation and survived, people who have taken a wrong path, dropped everything, started over, and found a way better path. Who has changed their job in pursuit of happiness? Every journalism teacher I’ve ever had. That chick in my writing group. That guy from work. I also get crazy-but-potentially-realistic ideas, like living in Paris or San Francisco for a year just to avoid being a constant New Yorker. Everywhere sounds like the place I need to be, these days. I’m on the verge of knowing what the hell it is I’m supposed to do next, I think, but who the fuck knows?

This is mindless rambling. All I’m saying is I hope the hurricane makes it impossible for me to go to work on Monday.