Instructions for a Thursday evening
Come in from work, sweating, not from the work itself but from the drive home. Go straight to the freezer. Chocolate mint ice cream is best in the red mug on which is printed “I love you” in every language (okay, six of them, all European). Admire your own expertise or good fortune at making homemade ice cream. Admire short sentences your friends have posted online.
Reflect briefly on the fact that most of your friends have legitimate, adult jobs right now - they’re teachers, nurses, accountants, software developers. Some of them are stay-at-home moms. That is a legitimate grown-up job. Some of them are full-time theology students. That still seems to you to be a legitimate grown-up job, even though it costs money instead of earning it. Studying theology full-time still seems rather glamorous, noble. You think this, even though you yourself have been a full-time theology student. Your friends have adult jobs, and you…have a tumblr.
Recall that nothing is glamorous from the inside. Well, almost nothing.
Reflect briefly on the situations of your more artistic friends who seem to be making it, and making it legit. Wonder vaguely what you should be doing differently.
Slice the lemons; squeeze them. Strain the juice. Improvise a lemonade recipe. Blend it the lemonade with the last of the orange juice. Admire your own genius.
Wonder briefly if your virtues outweigh your vices, what it means if they do, what it means if they don’t. Stop it.
Turn on Mumford & Sons. Water the plants.
Mull over economics while you do the dishes. Ask yourself again whether you’re really okay with the political bumper sticker you kind of want to put on the back of your car. Wonder again, briefly, if life is worthwhile. Hastily answer yourself that of course it is.
Stare at spines of books. Reread what you wrote yesterday, or last fall. Stare into space. Mark out three sentences; write seven words.
Keep your dinner date with Dostoevsky.
