Days 190-196 - NY, NY - Week 4 - High Anxiety and The Cure

New York is making me anxious. About money. This is a new feeling for me. Well, obviously, I hadn't worried about this before, because I had always worked and had a steady stream of income ever since I was 19 years old. And now that I'm unemployed, the buzzing streets of the city that I love so much ambush me with overwhelming attacks of paranoia. "What if I never find a job that will pay well? What if I will not be able to pay mortgage? Shit, I'll have to sell my cute little apartment, and move somewhere cheap. True, I have always been lucky with my jobs, but what if my luck has run out???" When I force myself into rational thinking about this fear (which is very difficult to get to through the quite tangible panicky symptoms such as heart palpitations and waves of sudden weakness - ridiculous, right?), I realize how irrational it is. After all, I'm fully qualified and talented enough (as well as modest:)) to expect a good salary in the future of my choosing. I finally realize that New York can be quite intimidating and almost impossible to enjoy while disconnected from the lifeline of continuous influx of money into your account. At least, for me. It is quite annoying that all of a sudden I cannot relax on the subject. I'm a bit disappointed at myself...

The Cure

To distract myself from this high anxiety, I read. A lot. This week I have devoured three books: "Without Reservations: The Travels Of an Independent Woman" by Alice Steinbach, "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi" by Geoff Dyer, and "Don't Read The Book" by Michael Clifford. The travelogue was recommended by a friend, "Jeff in Venice" was a New Yorker book club selection, and the book by Clifford was my own pick based - for the first time in my life (I usually buy books by recommendation only) - solely on my sudden attraction to its cover at Barnes and Noble. None of these books is especially good. However, all of them are entertaining. "Jeff in Venice" deserves a special mention, because it almost made me blush: after about a hundred pages -without any particular warning that it was going that way - it suddenly launched into a very detailed two-page play-by-play of pretty sophisticated (in the sense of highly complicated and finely experienced) sex. Turns out that I was startled by this sudden turn of events only because I had not bothered to read the cover that clearly defines the book as "a wildly original novel of erotic love and spiritual yearning". I wouldn't go so far as "wildly original", but it was a pleasure to read. At the same time it made me feel a bit stupid since I couldn't catch any allusions to Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice", whereas apparently it was meant as an act of repudiation. Oh well...

Reading took up most of my time this week, but I did do other things as well.

Eat Pray Love

A friend asked me, "Are you going to watch 'Eat Pray Love', loosely based on your life story?" Of course. I just had to do it. The movie felt longer than the book and was much less funny and far more dramatic. I know, many people don't like 'Eat Pray Love', but I actually enjoyed the book quite a bit. Most likely, I just was in the right mind-frame for taking it all in exactly as it was intended. And no, I hadn't decided to go travel because of the book; in fact, my general direction had been mapped out long before I knew about the existence of the book. Actually, I would have never even thought about reading it had it not been for this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on the subject of creative genius, especially the Tom Waits beat:

One day he was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when a fragment of a melody popped into his head. He looked around for something to capture the tune -- a pencil or pen -- but had nothing to record it.

He started to panic that he'd lose the melody and be haunted by it forever and his talent would be gone. In the midst of this anxiety attack, he suddenly stopped, looked at the sky, and said to whatever force it was that was trying to create itself through the melody, "Excuse me. Can you not see I'm driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment ... otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen."

Waits said his creative process, and the heavy anxiety that permeated it, changed that day. In releasing the creative force, he realized that creativity "could be a peculiar, wondrous, bizarre collaboration and conversation between Tom and the strange external genius that was not Tom".

Happy Hour at SI

Just like New York, Strategic Insight hasn't changed a bit since I left on my trip. This encounter felt strange though, as I showed up right where I had left off six months ago. Realizing this confused me: on one hand, it is comforting to know that things don't change and hence you cannot lose your professional grip even after a long absence; on the other hand, does that mean that while you are continuously present at a non-changing job, you are actually stagnant? Despite this unpleasant question lingering on my mind, the evening was more than pleasant. The Stag's Head is a great venue, one of those rare places where you can actually sit down with your drink and talk, instead of the usual lip-reading to the head-cracking musical "background", pushed and squished by a million people around the bar.

Tell me what gift you choose for your boyfriend, and I will tell you who you are...

No, I still cannot figure that one out! Here's the story. Tanya's boyfriend Michael finished writing his book last week, and as a gift, she... ADOPTED A WALRUS for him. Sweet, no? We sincerely hope that the walrus is not coming to visit his new family any time soon.

www.freerice.com

I wish I had found this website - www.freerice.com - when Tatyana and Liang were obsessed with iPhone Scrabble in Cozumel. That could have certainly given me a competitive edge in the obsession department back then. But it's OK, I'll catch up now. My current indulgence of compulsive behavior actually makes a difference: FreeRice is a non-profile website run by the United Nations World Food Program, and for each correct answer in your vocabulary game it makes a 10-grain rice donation to the countries with chronic hunger.

Sunday brunching

Brunch is my favorite meal. What can be more relaxing and enjoyable than getting together with friends on a late Sunday morning to spend several leisurely hours in the presence of delicious food, refreshing drinks, and pleasant chit-chat about nothing!