well, it's been ten days, and the latest Great Transformation appears to be sticking, the bit where after eighteen months of wandering in the wilds of depression, despair, and the ever-present autopilot which doesn't require an identity or a soul to operate, i've emerged again as me. i feel like i've written this all to frequently, to the point where i have no credibility anymore, but i really do feel like me again. which means you (both in your possible capacity as my real-life friend, and in your capacity as anonymous confidant) are not going to get as much of the i-am-doomed extrapolative depressed mope. if you liked that me, now would be a good time to cut bait.

which isn't to say that there aren't still problems, but i am confident i can tackle them. first on the list is the fact that i meet few people i like these days. i think most of this is the fact that i don't meet a lot of people, and i've always had pretty high standards (for friends), but there's another issue.

that issue is that ultimately i think the best pool that i've ever had a chance to meet people from is harvard undergraduates. i suppose there is a tinge of elitism here, which is strange considering two of my three best female friends are not harvard alums, and i don't mean anything by it on a case by case basis. and certainly a large fraction of harvard undergraduates are stereotypical hard-working high-stress competitive pre-meds, or high-society black-pants finals club girls. but disclaimers aside, harvard undergrads at the time i was there had more in common with me, appealed to me more than any general pool of people ever has (i mean in terms of being potential life partners, but this is also true of activity partners etc..)

the thing is that i haven't really changed. i found myself in college; that is the person i am. the ebullient intense conversationalist, the one whose heart jumps in his chest at new crushes and novelty in general. the one who is profoundly affected by even the most cookie-cutter of movies. for the past six months, having no other living option (or so i felt), i tried to reinvent myself as a pragmatic person who fits smoothly into society. but that wasn't me; i didn't feel like me. i felt soulless and robotic. now i feel like me again.

most people do change after graduating. i don't think harvard alums in general are the people i want to meet today; i think it's still harvard undergrads. i don't know if i really want someone with a real job, someone who lives in the real world. i'd trade maturity and pragmatism for the youthful, emotional, real dreamer any day. the problem is that i'm not at harvard, so meeting harvard undergrads en masse is impractical. not to mention creepy. which means i need to find where these types of people are these days, by which i mean at age 25 and in the bay area. i guess the obvious place to look is berkeley/stanford grad students.

i'm just sort of thinking out loud here. feel free to cut in if you know the right person for me. i'm sure there are people who have lasted until 25 as i am and was. it's not like i'm looking for someone young and impressionable and naive. but it's true in general that people do get less dynamic as they age, and i am looking for someone dynamic. i'm not sure what the upshot of all of this really is, but i continue to brainstorm ideas of how to meet people.

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