No longer feeling under attack

My new house is starting to become less threatening.

I’m still stuck dealing with an air conditioner repair dude who really creeps me out, in a way that goes beyond a mere suspicion of the integrity of his business practices, but who gives me that cliche women’s intuition red flag of NOPE NOT OKAY. However, I’m hoping that one day very soon, I will be finished with him. Forever.

I used my detective skills to figure out the source (I think? I hope?) of the mysterious water spot on the ceiling. Instead of a four-horsemen-doomsday-faulty-plumbing scenario, I think I just need some caulk to prevent pooled water on the bathroom floor from sneaking its way in between the tub and the tile.

When I was walking my dog the other night, I was welcomed to the neighborhood by a Cute Guy On My Street. After two weeks of living in my new house, this was the first time anyone on my street has spoken to me, other than some occasional shouts from crazy/drunk people emerging from the bar down the street. He was doing yard work, and he was incredibly friendly. I can’t even say how much this perked me up. It’s not that I expect that anything will ever come of Cute Guy On My Street, but it is frankly comforting to know that he exists. Thank you, Cute Guy On My Street. Thank you for being welcoming, and thank you for being cute.

Now, for the first time in about six weeks, I am going to be able to sleep in this weekend. I am not going to have to spend my entire weekend freaking out about painting, packing, moving, or unpacking. I’m not finished unpacking in my new house, and I am far from finished with everything (including painting) that I need to do at the old house. But, by god, this weekend will be mine.

No one has (as far as I know) attempted to steal anything from my car, house, or yard. Evan has made it to the top 10 on So You Think You Can Dance. I’ve discovered a new way of cooking kale that I really like. My dog is peeing on the carpet slightly less. If the government could just get it together and send me my $8,000, things would be totally aces.

Of course, I feel anxious about even writing this blog post. I am sure I am jinxing things for myself by celebrating all that is going well. So, friends, what do you think is next? The check engine light in my car has been randomly coming on, so that could provide some financially tragic excitement. Hey, the possibilities are endless.

Reminds me of home

I moved into my new house last Friday. Since then, it has kind of seemed like my new house is out to get me.

The air conditioning hadn’t been working, so a repair guy came out last Friday to take a look. He told me that my air conditioner was not working because it appeared that someone had attempted to steal my A/C unit, and the unit had gotten damaged in the process. Someone must have been watching the house, knew it was vacant, and decided to go for it.

It was unsettling that my first day in my new house, I learned that some threatening stranger had violated it (and me) by attempting to steal the air conditioner. It made me feel uneasy and a little unsafe and kind of uncomfortable. After all, you know what they say about those air conditioner-stealers…first stop, air conditioner theft, next stop, rape and pillage.

Since then, in the six days I have lived there, my sister fell down the steps at the new house, and broke her ankle when it slammed into the house’s ceramic tile floor. A mysterious water spot appeared on the ceiling beneath my upstairs bathroom, leading me to panic about whether or not I am going to have to spend an ungodly amount of money on a plumbing crisis. The air conditioner still is only temporarily fixed, because there is supposedly a recall on a coil in my furnace, and the repair guy wants to fix it all at once.

The house is filling up with weird smells as my dog pees on the carpet, and I follow behind him with carpet cleaner. His pee and the carpet cleaner all combine with the smells from the person before to create something really funky. I’ve tried using Febreze, but that only adds another unpleasant layer of scent to the smell cocktail. My dog has been throwing up, too, likely because he keeps eating dog poop in the yard from the last dog that lived in the house.

And to add insult to injury, when I was out walking my dog the other night, some punk teenager threw a used menstrual pad into my yard. Which is not only rude, but puzzling. Because why in the world did someone decide to take care of that issue while outside?

“Welcome to home ownership!” people are telling me.

Thanks, people Thank you for perpetrating the myth that home ownership is this great goal to strive toward, when really you’re just going to end up using a plastic bag like a glove to pick up nasty sanitary products out of your yard.

I moved from a house that has been “home” for the last eleven years, even though a few of those years were spent in dorm rooms and apartments. I miss the sameness of my old house. I miss my old grocery store to the extent that I am tempted to drive 20 minutes to go to the old grocery store, rather than go to the one that is 2 minutes from my house. (I take grocery shopping very seriously.)

I like my house, essentially. And it’s got all my stuff there, my sister, and my dog. I can watch So You Think You Can Dance there, just like I could at my old house. My room at the new house is practically the same color as my room at my old house. The new house reminds me of home. But it’s not quite.

Infinite Summer

At the beginning of 2009, I set out for myself a rather ridiculously impressive list of goals I hoped to accomplish in the year to come. I’ve done really well on some of them–for example, by my becoming fully financially independent and buying a house of my very own (and let’s not play around, that’s pretty impressive given that I’m 26)–and less well for others, like, say, writing 150 posts in this blog.

One of my goals was to finally read, in full, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I bought the book a few years ago, and like so many other people, I got to approximately page 163 and then happened to set the book down and never pick it up again. This year, though, I was determined to get the book read. As meaningful as the work of David Foster Wallace is to me, I can hardly call myself any sort of fan when I hadn’t managed to finish The Big Book. While other goals fell by the wayside, I remained committed to reading Infinite Jest over the summer.

And that is why I was ecstatic when I discovered that there was an online community of people planning to do exactly the same thing.

Given that my job is kind of crazy right now, and I’ve been frantically busy moving into a new house and helping get another one ready to go on the market, I had been concerned that the Infinite Jest goal might be another one of my resolutions that ended with not much more than a pathetic attempt. But not now!

There are few things in life I love more than being a part of a community. It’s why I’m fascinated by online fandom, and why I loved going to midnight release parties for Harry Potter, and why I even kind of enjoy going to the mall on the day after Thanksgiving. I feel such stupid, giddy contentment in sharing an experience with strangers. And so, if I have to work through this book in order to share the experience with others, THEN BY GOD, I WILL GET THROUGH IT.

As today was the first day of summer, today was the official kick-off for Infinite Summer. I spent the day packing boxes and stressing out about the fact that the air conditioning is broken at my new house and feeling completely overwhelmed by everything I have to do before I move into my new house this Friday. However, at 9:20 tonight, I sat down with my dinner and I read the first 16 pages of Infinite Jest.

In the company of a community of readers, I can’t help but resist the possibility that I might be left out.

So! 16 pages down, 1063 or so pages to go.

Can Dance

Oh god, I love “So You Think You Can Dance.”

With every season of the show, my love grows greater and more absurd. The first season I watched it, two years ago, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Last year, I actually voted a couple of times for my favorite dancers, and I drove two hours in order to go see the tour.

This season, I have apparently turned into a crazed fangirl who votes dozens of times for my favorite dancer, the fantastic Evan Kasprzak, and who feels Very Strongly that Evan must at least make it into the top 10, because my life requires the opportunity to go see him on tour. Furthermore, I am pre-fangirling for season 6, when I have high hopes that Evan’s insanely talented and, frankly, kind of dreamy brother Ryan will be in the top 20.

Things in my life have been so hectic and stressful lately that by the time Wednesday night rolls around, I am praising all manner of deities that I don’t believe in for the arrival of SYTYCD and the blessed, blessed escapism that it provides.

The biggest reason that I am so grateful for SYTYCD, though, is that it really was the inspiration for me to start dancing again. It made me miss dancing. It reminded me of how much I love to perform. And so, around the end of the summer last year, I happened to notice an advertisement for adult hip hop classes near my house. As soon as the concrete idea of taking dance classes again was put into my head, I decided that it really had to happen.

I didn’t think my old dance studio offered any adult classes, but I decided to call just to check. It turned out that, yes, my dance teacher does have adult classes. My sister and I spent a few months last fall in that adult class, before my dance teacher asked us if we might want to go back to the class we were in before we stopped dancing, the class that is sometimes called the “senior class” at that studio. Of course we did.

In less than a year, I went from sitting on the couch admiring, and occasionally sarcastically criticizing, other people’s dancing to being challenged to work hard and improve as a dancer myself. I’ve spent the past few months actively trying to get in better physical shape and practicing tap in my kitchen so that I would be ready for the dance recital, so that I would just be better. I’m spending every Monday night of this summer in a conditioning class because I don’t want to lose what I’m just now getting back.

Going back to dance has been one of the best decisions I have made since graduating from college, because it has given me a goal to work toward, which I am realizing is critical to my feeling content. If I don’t have something to try and achieve, I am pretty useless. But not now. Now, I get to experience the triumph of dance competency.

As you can see, I’ve got the trophy to prove it.

SO!

Melody, what have you been doing with your time lately, since you clearly have not been updating this nice blog?

1. Buying a house. Yeah. The house isn’t officially mine yet, so I’m not going to say too much, although all signs currently point to go. I will just say that the house is fantastic, and as far as I can tell, it’s even better than what I was hoping for, and that I am excited.

2. Obsessing about all the stuff I will need to buy for my house. I already have most of my furniture covered. I am lucky. But I am going to need to put up a fence. I am going to need to buy some sort of little outdoor shed. I need to buy a lawn mower, of the environmentally-friendly push-mower variety. I really want to buy a compost bin. And wouldn’t it be cool to have one of those outdoor fire pit things? But most importantly, I REALLY want a hammock.

3. Obsessing about how awesome it will be when I can finally realize my life-long dream of owning a hammock. When I was four years old, I tried to convince my mom that she should take the bed out of my room and replace it with a hammock. Cruelly, she refused to do so. I could not understand her logic. She has never wanted a hammock. But soon, I will be in my own damn house, and I can fill up the entire backyard with hammocks if I want to. THERE WILL BE HAMMOCKS!

4. Losing seven pounds. Since my “seven in seven” post, I have lost five pounds. And I have two weeks to go until the dance recital. In a rare moment, I am actually accomplishing that which I set out to accomplish. I may actually not look terrible in my dance costumes. Go! Team! Melody!

5. And speaking of that, relearning how to tap dance. You know what happens when you don’t tap dance for six years? Your brain forgets how to do it. And I used to be such a competent little tap dancer. Thank god my dance teacher always puts me in the back row.

6. Pretending I’m not a complete introvert. Hey! It’s Derby! Hey! Your cousin is graduating! Hey! It’s Mother’s Day! Hey! You and your BFF live in the same city for the first time in years!

7. Writing blog posts and never finishing them. Right now, I have three drafts of blog posts started. One is about the Derby, one is about Anne of Green Gables, and one is about the dream of getting a PhD in history. I hope none of those topics sound terribly interesting to you, because apparently none of them were terribly interesting to me, and I seriously doubt that they will ever be completed.

On being a public radio fangirl

I debated what to bring with me to last night’s live This American Life show in Chicago, in hopes of getting Ira Glass’s autograph. The DVD of the television show? My TAL t-shirt? My copy of The New Kings of Non-Fiction? A tattoo pen for my heart?

I decided to take my ipod. Not only was it small enough that it easily fit in my purse, but if there is one object that I associate with This American Life, aside from perhaps my car’s radio (which would have been challenging to bring), it is my ipod. It was the 80+ episodes of TAL I had on my ipod that got me through three freezing January nights without heat and electricity. It’s on my ipod that I listen to TAL while I’m taking my dog on a walk through my neighborhood.

When I was carefully considering this decision, I found myself contemplating my status as the type of person who wants Ira Glass’s autograph in the first place. It’s not accurate to say that I enjoy public radio. I don’t. When it comes to my favorite radio shows, like This American Life or Radio Lab, I really. love. them. I wondered if I should be more ashamed that I act like a hyperactive groupie about a public radio show than should, say, fans of the Jonas Brothers–a phenomenon that seems to lend itself more naturally to grand displays of unnecessary affection.

In one of my favorite episodes of This American Life, “What I Learned From Television,” Ira Glass says, “The things I love, I love completely.” That quote is an incredibly accurate description of how I function. When I love something, I can’t help but commit an incredible amount of energy toward loving it a lot.

I met (politely accosted?) Ira Glass twice last night, once before the show, and once after. Yes, it wasn’t enough for me to meet him just once, when I apparently stumbled inadvertently into a pre-show reception where he was probably supposed to be talking up important public radio donors or something. I had to follow that up with my public radio groupie act by waiting outside the theater’s back door, because in truth, I really wanted a picture with him, as well. Dear god, I am needy. But both times, he was nice enough to talk to me. To sign my ipod. To stand in the rain and take a picture with me. He didn’t seem to be too bothered by my flailing words of inarticulate appreciation, or that I took it upon myself to track him down not once, but twice.

Last year’s This American Life Live(!) event seemed like a celebration of the TV show. This year’s event seemed like more of a celebration of the radio show. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the TV show, because I have enjoyed every episode of it. But I will never love the TV show the way I love the radio show. The TV show, I appreciate on an intellectual level, but the radio show provides me with a visceral level of comfort and happiness.

So, when Ira Glass asked me after the show last night if I had “any notes,” all I could do initially was babble incoherently about how wonderful This American Life is and how haaaaappy it makes me and it is just the beeessst and, oh, I am a dazed, brainless fangirl iiiiiiiidiot.

Eventually, I managed to get a slight handle on the situation and say something about what I actually did really enjoy about the live show. It took the standard radio show elements, and added a really interesting, and sometimes unexpected, visual layer on top of that. I found it to be really effective. The experience still felt essentially similar to listening to the show, but it happened to also have the visual sense added into it. It was fun and funny and clever and wonderful.

The big difference between last night’s show and listening to the radio show was the experience of being in a room full of people who all love TAL. Radio is a solitary and personal experience, and that is a part of what makes it so special. But last night, there was something even more personal about sharing the singular radio experience with so many like-minded strangers.

When my friend and I were walking towards the Chicago theater last night, I stopped to take pictures of the marquee that advertised This American Life Live in Chicago! I noticed all around me that other people were also stopping on the sidewalk to take a picture of the marquee, just like we were. “I’m with my people!” I told my friend.

I love This American Life completely, for reasons I can articulate and for reasons that I can’t. I may be more dorky about the way I appreciate This American Life as compared to the 3,596 people in the theater who did not stand in a cold, wet, dark alley after the show, but I wasn’t nearly as alone in my love as I usually am. I was with my people. Everyone else may have simply applauded when they saw Torey Malatia on stage, and I may have yelled, “GREAT SHOW TONIGHT!!!!” when I saw him in the alleyway, but in the end, we’re all joined together as the nerds that know who Torey Malatia is in the first place.

Seven in seven

A week ago, I had a rather horrifying experience.

I tried on two of the costumes for my dance recital at the end of May.

I know I’m not as thin as the last time I was in a dance recital, five years ago. But when my dance teacher suggested that she order a size medium for my costumes, it made sense. A medium-size costume is what I used to order, and I typically wear medium-sized clothes.

It seems that “medium” was a very bad choice. “Medium” is the size that makes me look in the mirror and shudder in horror. “Medium” is the size that makes me say to myself, “I don’t want to leave my room wearing this costume, much less get up on stage.” “Medium” is the size that causes the dance costume to ride up in unpleasant ways when I actually try to move in it, and not just stand still and suck my stomach in as far as it will go.

These “mediums” are not made out of helpful material. I have worn very flattering medium-sized dance costumes in my past, even when I weighed more than I do now. But these two costumes are made of very, very thin, shiny, stretchy material. That very thin, shiny material is stretched across all those body areas that I try to hide. The light reflects of the shininess, and hey, what do you know, that is not a pretty sight at all.

After trying on these costumes last week, I got the idea that I needed to lose seven pounds in seven weeks. Not only would I hopefully look a hell of a lot better in my dance costumes, but hopefully the exercise necessary to accomplish this would make me stronger in actually performing the dances.

And I do say “necessary exercise,” because here’s the thing–my diet is actually really good. I almost wish I had a worse diet, so that I could make some drastic changes to it and be able to drop some weight quickly. I do occasionally enjoy sweets and white bread, but a typical day of eating for me looks something like, oatmeal for breakfast, steamed kale and lentils for lunch, and roasted sweet potatoes and chickpeas for dinner. With some pomegranate juice and chocolate soy milk thrown in there, along with some sort of very small dessert-like something. I can’t really make a whole lot of modifications to that, other than eating less of it all.

But I’ve thrown away the last of my Bunny Basket Eggs, and put the rest of the Easter candy in the freezer, to be enjoyed after the dance recital. I made cupcakes for a friend’s birthday, and I threw away the leftovers. I’ve made an easy cut to my daily calorie consumption by no longer drinking the chocolate soy milk.

So, this means exercise, which I hate. Lots of it. I’m trying to work myself up to starting (and actually completing) the torturous 30-Day Shred this Monday, the day I get back from a trip to Chicago.

It means six weeks (because the first week has already passed) of a new level of self-discipline. Because the alternative involves me being on a stage in front of an audience filled with people who will undoubtedly be sitting there saying, “Look at that girl, the one with the lights reflecting off her shiny, round middle section! Yikes, I’m glad that’s not my daughter, embarrassing herself like that.”

A Stupid Mistake, and a Shocking Lack of Appropriate Punishment

My last day in Boston, I was so busy patting myself on the back for being extraordinarily competent at remembering how to do something as simple as knowing when to get on and off a subway car, I failed to be competent at something as simple as correctly reading the time of my departure flight.

The day I left Boston, I woke up at 8 a.m. and leisurely packed and got ready to go to the airport. My flight was to leave at 12:35, so I figured that if I left the hotel at 9:45, that would give me ample time to get to the airport and get through security. It would give me more than enough time, really, which is what I wanted, because I get anxious when I travel.

I arrived at the airport and went to the self check-in machine. I inserted my credit card and the machine searched for my reservation. And then the machine politely informed me that I was checking in too late for my flight.

I didn’t know how that was possible, because it was 10:30 at that point, and my flight wasn’t until 12:35.

I was checking in too late for my flight? Well, yes, I was, because my flight wasn’t at 12:35. My flight was at 10:35. My flight was scheduled to land in Chicago at 12:35. It was not scheduled to leave Boston at 12:35.

Idiot.

I tried to quell my panic as I realized that I must have incorrectly read the travel itinerary that I had printed off before my trip. What was I going to do? How was I going to get home? Most importantly, how much was this stupid mistake going to cost me?

Meanwhile, the machine helpfully asked me if I would like to re-route my flight. Uh, YES PLZ AND THANK YOU.

I was put on standby for a flight that actually was supposed to leave Boston at 12:35, and then put on standby for a connecting flight to Louisville that would get me home at 8 p.m. that night. Somehow, I was lucky enough that I got on both flights, and I arrived in Louisville right at 8 p.m.

After my initial hours of self-flagellation, I became unnerved by how little I was being punished for my mistake. Certainly, I had luck working in my favor, because if those flights had been full, then I would have had a much harder time getting home. But I did get lucky. And I was not being punished. Why in the world was I not being punished? That’s obviously what’s supposed to happen to people when they make a stupid mistake. You aren’t supposed to make a stupid mistake, and then “luck out” and get on the next flight.

I got home that night, and took a look at my credit card bill online, to see what kind of damage I had done in Boston. I noticed that there was over $400 in “pending charges” that was lurking on my credit card. I could not figure out what that could be, except for one thing. The airline must have charged me some crazy fee for missing my flight, and they never told me they were doing it.

I can understand being punished (I DESERVE to be punished!), but it seemed unconscionable that they would have charged me money, without telling me first and give me an option. I mean really, HOW. DARE. THEY? The money that this would cost me! $400! ARRRGGHH!

For nearly 24 hours, I continued in my anxious, indignant state, until my mom finally told me to call my credit card company and make sure that the $400 pending charge was from the airline. I called the credit card company and was informed that it was merely a holding charge the hotel I had stayed at had put on my card. I would not actually be charged that money.

There would be no punishment whatsoever for my mistake.

Say what you will about the airline industry. I have said most of it myself, particularly when I found myself trapped in the hellish Newark airport. However, I am impressed with a company that says, “Hey, you screwed up? Well, here’s what we’re going to do. I am going to re-arrange my schedule to accommodate for that screw-up. And you know what? I’m not going to charge you a single cent for being such a complete dumbass.”

Thank you, American Airlines, for getting me home, despite the fact that I can’t read a piece of paper.

Everybody Knows My Name

On Sunday, I came back from a trip I took to Boston, where I had a wonderful time. It was a mini-reunion with my friends from college, and I immediately felt like no time had passed since the days when I spent nearly all of my conscious hours of these people. I found within myself the person that I was when I lived with those people for three years. All the old dynamics were there, despite the fact that all of us have grown up a little bit more since the last time we saw each other.

Before the trip, I had agonized about whether or not I would still remember how to navigate the T–especially since the MBTA had gone to a fancy Charlie Card system since I had left. How dare Boston update their antiquated T system and expect me to readjust, after two long years of driving a car wherever I need to go?!

But I had no problems whatsoever. As soon as I walked into the airport T station, I said to myself, “I’ve got this shit. Why did I worry?” (The answer is because I am a first-class worrier, and why give up that piece of my identity?) It may have been two years, but Boston was still my city, and I could get to where I needed to go.

My friends and I spent one day on our college campus, Wellesley, which is just outside the city of Boston. I was truthfully a little worried about how I would react to being at Wellesley, because it is a place that represents to me, some of the most pure feelings of belonging and self-worth. I associate Wellesley with the happiest version of myself that I have ever experienced.

When I was getting my graduate degree at BU, trapped in a terrible living situation, and spending as much time as possible at Wellesley with my friends who still technically belonged there, when I had to leave campus, every time, I had an overwhelming urge to throw myself down on the ground, right there in the snow and dirt, and refuse to ever leave that spot.

But Wellesley, just as with Boston, and just as with my friends, it felt like I had never left. And when it was time to go, I didn’t feel like I needed to throw myself onto the ground and absorb the soil of that place into my skin, so that I could never be separated from it. It didn’t feel like I had ever left Wellesley. It felt like I continuum of where I had been and where I would continue to be. I mean, I actually took a nap in the student center. I can’t think of another public place where I’d feel completely comfortable and justified in sitting my ass down on a couch, putting my feet up on a table, and falling asleep.

My time in Boston and at Wellesley was incredibly comforting to me, because it told me that I could go away for years, and then come back, and I could still feel like I belonged there. Boston, and Wellesley especially, will always be a little bit of my home. This trip made me feel like I can go away, and I can come back, and it will all still be there waiting for me. That part of my life isn’t as over as I had thought it was. It’s still there, and I can have it back when I need it again.

The Small Stuff

I can’t help but feel like the older I get, the more neurotic I get.

You would think that I would have been crazy as a child, and in my teen years. My life had plenty of upheaval–I moved ten times in ten years, and my mom divorced twice–but my memory of my childhood is that I was mostly calm and content. I was shy and chubby and awkward, but I had my books. I felt like your typical emo outcast in high school, but I had some wonderful friends. Overall, I wouldn’t say that I was excessively or abnormally needy. (Although, for those of you who knew me then, feel free to correct me!)

With my (in-progress) transition to adulthood, however, it seems like my neediness and selfishness and particular-ness are reaching new heights.

I feel like I require a great deal more downtime now than I did as a kid. When I began high school, I had school every day, choir practice twice a week, dance class, and homework every night. Now, I feel disgruntled when I have to attend a lunch meeting, instead of taking my normal lunch hour, and god forbid I have to work late one evening. I shake my fist at the sky and think, universe, how dare you force me to deviate from my routine? And then I wonder, what precisely in my life is so stressful that I need so much downtime to recover from it?

I have a desire for the details in my life to be precise. I take great joy in making sure that my computer’s clock precisely matches the official time. I actually have Time.Gov on my bookmarks toolbar. When I’m in the car, my car’s clock needs to match exactly the time they say it is on WFPL. I will immediately adjust my car’s clock while driving if it does not match, because clearly, having my car’s clock synchronized with WFPL’s clock is about fourteen times more important than having my hands positioned on the steering wheel at 10 and 2.

I check the weather and the news several times a day, and I feel unsettled when I don’t have a basic grasp on what both are doing. Do I really need to know how much the DOW has dropped today? Of course not. I don’t even have any investments! But it certainly feels like I need to know.

Truthfully, I pride myself on being self-aware. I can’t help but constantly analyze my thoughts, feelings, and actions to try and figure out why they exist the way that they do. Most of the time, I feel like I have a good handle on why I behave the way I behave, but I can’t figure out why my level of selfish I-NEED-IT-THIS-WAY-AND-NOW-PLEASE-AND-THANK-YOU has increased so dramatically.

Is it just a downward spiral from here on out? Because shit, if I am this particular and needy now, at the age of 26, what am I going to be like at the age of 50? Instead of just feeling grumpy when I go to Target and they have some easter candy out, but not my favorite Bunny Basket Eggs, am I going to deem it necessary that I hold the Target employees hostage until they provide me with the requested Bunny Basket Eggs? I mean, hell, I hope to have kids one day, and if there is one thing that will screw up your schedule, it is kids.

Or is it that the absence of any real stress and responsibility in my life is creating this sense of urgency? I am rarely wronged. I am lucky enough to currently live rent-free, which allows me to do things like occasionally travel and save my extra money. I am lucky enough to have a job. Barack Obama is the president. Is the lack of major stress in my life causing me to look for stress in the little things? Maybe I need to go back to school, just so I have actual deadlines to worry about.