Off the Fritz

It confirms to me repeatedly that I would not ever want to build a life here, and that the modern lower-to-middle-class lifestyle in this city is isolating and sad for someone with my interests and personality

I can spend time with my parents and understand a little more about them as human beings every time I visit them

It’s bad in that:

I’m always both very bored and deeply sad when I spend too much time here. I’m here for another 3 days and I’ve been ready to go back to Brooklyn since at least 2 days ago. A lot of the routines and norms I encounter when I come back here just make me really anxious and sad in a way that the workings of the city don’t

The weather is terrible and almost nothing is safely walkable or bikeable and everything is so sprawled and far apart, so it’s really hard to just go outside and exist in the world without getting in a car, driving somewhere, parking, usually spending $, etc.

Finding interesting stuff to do and encountering creativity/individuality is just so much rarer and more labor-intensive here

It’s speculative fiction/thoughtful sci fi about a deadly and bizarre disease slowly overtaking society and gutting the country, all as a metaphor for the collapse of society under late capitalism

But it’s also a funny, specific, moving and beautifully-written meditation about the confusion and existential dread of being a working millennial and trying to visualize a future in what is obviously a slowly declining society/country

I was rly upset after the whole blowout between my sister and the rest of the fam and he came outside, sat next to me, and basically told me she’s immature and volatile and that my feelings are valid, which was nice

And told me that in about a decade things will be better because she’s still caught in weird post-college party life right now and hasn’t had any real growth since she graduated (v true). He has three sisters, all of whom are a little weird or difficult in their own ways, and he said that his relationships with them (and their relationships with each other) didn’t solidify and stabilize until well into adulthood because they were all maturing and learning empathy and/or valuable emotional lessons at wildly different rates

And then my dad and I talked sat on the curb of our driveway with glasses of whiskey and talked for another hour about the future of humanity and cities and people in the world and all the things we’re nervous about and all the things we’re hopeful about