Happy Friday

What I was supposed to do this weekend: Run a half-marathon. What I am doing this weekend: Watching dvr'd episodes of Kitchen Nightmares, going to a Jenny Lewis show, and, if I'm feeling unexpectedly ambitious, possibly making and eating french toast.

I don't know how this happens. Sometimes out of nowhere I will get this intense and overwhelming surge of energy that convinces me I'm ready to take on the world. Just a month ago in a frenzy of inspiration I signed up to register voters at the gay center, joined a running club, and seriously considered doing another marathon. Now I can barely summon the motivation to leave my office at lunch every day.

I wish I could break this habit; that I could hold on to even a third of the momentum I generate when I go through these phases. Over the past couple years though it just seems to be impossible and instead of being able to accomplish at least one or two of the many goals I've set out for myself I more often backslide into an embarrassing mess of drinking, smoking, and sleeping with strangers. All things that, although I'm feeling somewhat stagnant and frustrated with myself, I'm shockingly not doing now.

I'd like to think that this is a sign of maturity, that even though I'm still too restless and impulsive to remain committed to any one thing for more than a month, I'm at least growing past the stage where the only method I had for coping with indecision involved seeing how long I could subsist on nothing but low-fat muffins and stomping around the west village on my lunch break chain half-inhaling American Spirits and having animated conversations in my head with people I was mad at. I'd like to think that, but I'm not so sure it's the case. I'm turning 24 next week and I still feel like a mess.

If I said this to pretty much anyone I know they would laugh and/or yell at me and tell me you're supposed to be a mess at my age; that it takes decades before you can begin to start figuring anything out. Well this may be true, but it doesn't mean it helps. Just the other day I was complaining to my mom about my tendency to start a bunch of different things, devote my life to them for a few weeks, then promptly drop them along with my motivation to do anything more exhaustive than staring at the wall. She assured me that she has always been like that and that I would be okay. This might have been comforting coming from someone who hadn't spent the greater part of my childhood a manic depressive disaster. As it was it just served to reaffirm what I've always known; that no matter how old I get my family will always be crazy and that I am fucked.

Happy Friday. I'm going to go try to convince myself that drinking beer and eating pizza is in some way a productive alternative to running 13.1 miles on Saturday.