05-26-2005

I moved since my last entry.

I now live in a new and completely soulless apartment complex in Marlborough, MA, instead of the cute and very old apartment in a three story brick building in Brighton. Out of the city into the suburbs.

This place is practically brand new. They built it a year ago, and this particular unit was completed literally four months prior. I can still smell the construction work inside the unit – sawdust, drywall, fresh paint. I'm the first resident. And yet somehow, the rent is cheaper than my old Brighton place at 1200 a month. This is also cheaper than the last month of rent from back when I lived in San Francisco about three years ago, which was 1350 a month for a studio in another big complex. San Francisco may be the only place on Earth that's a lot more expensive than the immediate suburbs of Boston.

So I'm in the public space of this complex. There's a building next to the front office that has a rec room and three separate offices with a shared printer so you can, if you're so inclined, sit here and do some work. That's where I am now. Office number 2. There is nobody else here, a fact that makes me feel a little spectral.

In my office, if I look out the window, I see the pool area and two women lounging in the sun with bikinis on. Nobody is swimming but they opened the pool last week. I imagine the water is still too cold. I might give it a shot in a few weeks but not today. Today I am just checking out the amenities.

In my office there are a variety of productivity boosting items, including but not limited to, and in no particular order, a brand new Dell PC, a cable modem, a wireless network hub, two staplers, a few sets of black OfficeMax pens, a ball of rubber bands, Scotch tape, a black desk with a checkerboard pattern on top upon which most of the aforementioned items sit, and three cheaply upholstered generic chairs around it, one of which I'm sitting in. I do not know why there are three chairs in my office. Outside, in the hallway which joins these rooms, there is a vending machine, more than a few waste-paper baskets, a few windows looking out to the outside, and a very, very cheap rug. I can also smell the new carpet. The aroma mingles with the fresh wood.

I walked into the business center after finishing my workout, which was a pretty boring affair. Twenty three minutes on the bike, and thirty more on the treadmill. That may seem like a long workout at first glance, but it is not – only fifteen of the thrity minutes on the treadmill was actually taken at a run – the rest I walked to cool down. while the remainder was walked. Still, I put in about two point seven miles before it was all done, plus whatever I did on the bike.

And yet, after all of this very healthy behavior, I am going to go drive to the liquor store to purchase perhaps a double-sized beer (24 oz) and a bottle of wine. It's more than likely that I'll get hammered tonight. Don't ask me why. I suppose that I feel as though I have worked hard today, and somehow I deserve to screw my body up. Because otherwise I'll be too close to perfect. Nobody likes someone who is too perfect.

In the gym I was watching an episode of Law and Order: CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) on a wall mounted television. The show itself is generally watchable, although not as good as the original. However, this particular episode, which I've seen before, is pretty captivating to me, at least in part because the suspect is still committing crimes while the investigation is ongoing. It adds some tension to the plot, because you're not just worried about justice being done –you're also concerned that if the good guys don't get their man in time that someone else will be hurt.

Anyways. This particular episode, as I was saying, is about schizophrenia. And it's interesting because it makes me wonder if, in some ways, I'm slightly schitzo, too. Not in the clinical sense – I don't have hallucinations or multiple personalities or anything like that. But certainly I like to pretend that I am someone other than who I really am, at least on a semi-regular basis. I like to pretend that I'm rich or perfect or that I could be a fantastic guitarist or a ladykiller or anything - anything at all, if I just choose to do it. But that's not true. It's certainly not true now – now that I've solidified my skillsets and the daily habits and routines of life have hardcoded their way into my brain, settling in for the long-haul. And I don't know if it was really ever true.

Here is all I am. Single. Male. In the field of software development and support. I work for a financial company but I don't do anything financial for them, and I don't understand the so-called movements of the markets and I don't know how much I care to. The people I work with are mostly evil. They seem to be filled with ambition, but for what exactly I do not know. It seems to me that their dedication to create software is a proxy for wanting to work in finance themselves – to make trades and influence fortunes – namely and most importantly, their own.

I don't think this about all of my coworkers but most of them, yes. They just want to be rich. There is no other reason you would work at a financial company, right? It is hard to convince yourself that there is some greater good being performed here.

No, it is just: Moving money around. Trades, derivatives, stocks and bonds, ETFs and mutual funds focused on this sector and that sector. I know I should learn more about this stuff but most of my days are spent in meetings and looking at code. By the time I get home it's a minor miracle if I am able to work out, like I am doing today. And then it's an even greater miracle if I don't immediately feel the urge to douse myself in Vitamin A, as my friend Sheldon calls alcohol. Get your daily dose of Vitamin A, and keep the blahs away.

This job makes me depressed already, and I've been here a year and a half. Do you know I moved out to Marlborough for this company? I reported for duty in the financial district of Boston for nine months and then the company said: We're moving our IT and software development staff off-site to the 'burbs, for cost-savings. I agreed to move. The company gave me a small amount of money, 4K, to facilitate the move, and I ended up here.

I don't have anything else to say. I'm tired and I'm going to get drunk and play guitar hero for the last few hours.

I miss my girlfriend, still in Brighton.

For all its newness, this place is lonely as fuck.