Quality Or Quantity: Transitions

This is part of an experiment. I'm challenging myself to write something between four hundred and seven hundred words every day this week, after I got a bunch of positive feedback about it on Twitter. Maybe this is the first out of five. Maybe this is the first out of seven. I don't know, but there's going to at least four more coming, so if you're reading this on May 12 or 13th, keep your browser pointed here throughout the week.

The inside jokes: Quality or Quantity is a Bad Religion song, if my memory is right, from Against the Grain, my favorite record of theirs. Early in the Eleven Names development, Zach and I had an argument about quality versus quantity, that, famously, got nowhere and lead to my aggravation.

Thanks.


I don't think I can usefully avoid writing about transitions. Certainly, there's obvious parallels in my own life, in the form of graduating from college and then trying to figure out what I should do now that I have a little bit of time. I'm tightest in college with people a grade above me and my friends from around this city, I haven't seen in far too long.

There's still a room full of my college things in the room across from this one, but I can't really get started working on clearing it out until I sort through which clothes are dirty and which aren't. That might be a fool's errand, but I need to get on some kind of errand sooner rather than later. Not to mention that I left all my PlayStation 2 games and most frighteningly my memory card back in college, and I'm hoping the games got stashed in one of my friend's cars to be brought back to New Jersey or California, where they can be sent back to me. (Edit: the games are now in New Jersey and can be sent to me soon!)

These parallels strike me deeper than I want to admit, whether it's in what I do or how I want to crash back on the bed as opposed to calling up whatever the hell red mango is (apparently, it's an upscale place for frozen yogurt) and see if they're hiring, or having to look at all the t-shirts I've brought back from college and kept since high school and think, these are going to have to go.

That last example is painful to think about because of what those shirts mean to me and what they represent. I mean, really, how am I going to let go of a classic Midtown shirt, considering that band broke up three, four years ago (and I loved Save the World, Lose the Girl)? Or a relatively new Kid Dynamite one? My memories of rocking out on the Metra Electric Line after work at the Midway office are entwined with that shirt. (And I hope I'm never letting go of my Zombie Apocalypse shirt.)

Transitions, man. Black t-shirts to black button up longsleeves. Maybe then to white button up longsleeves. But then, this is all part of growing up, right? Putting away those childish things to make room for new adventures. The movement from "has lots of talent" to actually using that talent, or actually submitting those writing samples somewhere.

It's putting one foot forward in front of the other, whether it's from Meadville to Chicago, Chicago to Pittsburgh or from one block to another, the house to the concrete walls where a beach should be overlooking Lake Michigan. It's about not comparing myself to hipsters, or hipsters bitching about hipsters or to anyone else. The journey of a lifetime begins with a single step and putting the foot in the shoe and then that shoe on the pavement is the transition.

I know, intellectually, that I don't have to put away my videogames, and if I did, it would be an incredible waste of time, talent, emotion and desire, but that they're not (or shouldn't be) a social or intellectual focus on par with the other activities that will take up my time and imagination. I love writing columns. I think it's what I want to do until I can't think or analyze anymore. I also love videogames and punk rock music. Perhaps I don't have to choose between writing or the two other things I love, but figure out how to do all three at once.

That synthesis would be amazing. Getting paid to write (something I enjoy doing) about video games and punk rock music (something else I enjoy). Integrating my interests (both leisurely and on the clock) and taking the steps to make that reasonable for employment is a lot of hard, boring work of finding a website, a niche, a style, promotion and also just a lot of composition and, finally, content generation. It's not glamorous, (but then again, neither is selling high-end frozen yogurt) but it must be done if I want to, in the future, do what I want and be the person hanging above my own head making sure the work gets done.

Maybe that's the real transition.