Fight the New Drug

Fight the New Drug Video: My porn recovery story

***To see my featured talk "How Love Defeats Porn" given at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. click here. ***

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

2 A.M. Rant

It's two o'clock in the morning....and thoughts fill my head.

And instead of try to orchestrate an organized, well-thought out, well-planned post, I'm going to freestyle on this one.

Stream of consciousness if you will.  Eat your heart out William Faulkner.
It kills me not having time to write.  Ever since starting my job with USCCB two weeks ago, it's been a real adjustment of getting whole days to write and tweek out my little projects when I wasn't working to having zero time to write and work out.  Luckily I still pray.  Sort of.

The killer thing with me, and this has been true ever since I've started blogging (oh, the 'ol xanga days back in high school...) I literally come up with three things I would love to write about each day.

Seriously, that would be my dream job.  To live every day life and write about it. And get paid for it.  Huge asterisk there.

Some things I've been wanting to write about?  Working titles in my head:

-Spending Mother's Day with dad
-This male generation's heroic step
-Working at USCCB and how it's like those ESPN commercials where random athletes are there making copies
-Seeing Bobby, and my entry I've wanted to write A YEAR AGO about my boys in the seminary, and how awesomely normal they are
-The CORPS

The CORPS...this is my biggest failing to date.  Jimmy and I came up with this thing, what, a couple months ago?  Finally, last week, we decided last Friday we'd launch this baby, we both were off from work, I was anxious to get back to writing and e-mail the guys, a big project that was going to follow up nicely with my 48 Men one...

Then bam, Friday happened.  Bombs on Porcelain City.  A two day bout with food poisoning took me out of the starting line-up this past weekend and have been irritatingly worthless until yesterday when I finally resurrected Sunday (WWJD?)

What bothers me most is that I've been getting steady inquiries (not many) but steady enough to remind that it's something guys want, and I have bad feeling that if Jimmy and I don't get this baby up soon, we won't ever at all.

This does not even begin what has kept me up tonight.  Jobs.  Oh the pain, the hope, the wait, the horror.

I've so far beautifully orchestrated my three-tier plan for happiness for my life this fall.  It started as a hope, a dream this past January.

Step one.  Get best friend down here.
Boom, planted seed in him to get down here, boom, found a posting online for a job he'd be good at/would like, boom, planted the idea that he could e-mail the school that he'll be in the area when he's down here for spring break, boom he gets an interview the day he arrived to twon, boom he nails it (no surprise here), boom he lands job faster than I could say boom.  Step one completed.

Step two. Get beau back to D.C.
I will take no credit for finding her a job nor persuading her come to D.C., she and I both will tell you that she wanted to be in D.C. in the Fall regardless of me being here.  The only thing I will take credit for is finding her again.  Step two in promising stages.

Step three. Get a job, Matt!  Or hit the road Jack, or the stone.  Cold stone.  How about ice cream?
I feel like I'm in mid-stage of a full launch into real adulthood.  Adulthood meaning working and staying in one place and belonging to a community, a parish.  Argh, I could write a whole blog how I miss my parish in Arlington.  I just miss singing songs that I know and the feeling of belonging to something.

I do not regret my life of the past two years for one bit at all.  It's extraordinary the opportunity I've been given to live in Costa Rica for a year, live in community, travel to all the places we went there.  Then to go on with my job with Catholic Volunteer Network and travel the country to universities across America spreading the good news of service.

I am just anxious and I'm ready to be steady Eddy.  Oh, Eddy's Rocky Road, so good.  What's with the ice cream references?

That's funny, because I've finally declared to my body that I am lactose intolerant.  I even bought almond milk yesterday.  Can't wait to open that baby up.

And with the jobs...

Oh should I open up my applications again, how about OGLC or SF?
Or should I wait on this BVM position?
Or sulk that I haven't heard back from the ones I've really wanted at OC or even MM?
Or I could just speak in more ABBREVS so no one ones what I'm talking about.

And it's funny how in my beautifully orchestrated plan I worked out earlier influences what jobs I shoot for. Oh OK, Anthony's going to be in Arlington, I love Arlington, I should shoot for jobs in Arlington.  But what about the ones in Silver Spring or other parts in Maryland?  We're going to be living together, would we live in D.C.?  That doesn't make sense it's so expensive, but what about the commute?

And then there's Mimi and ever since we dated there's this everly soft ticking bomb in me that really wants to make things happen with her, and provide for her, and safe money with her, and down that rabbit hole of dreams and worries, but I don't let myself entertain any of that without a job.

And in the end, I would love to just write.  Because it kills me not to write.  Almost as much not to pray.  Almost.

Big breath.

My 2 a.m. rant became a 3 a.m. relief.  At least for now I got to get things written down.  It's as if my fingers missed typing this fast with this purpose.  At least for now I can rest knowing I at least wrote.

Faulkner, you may have As I Lay Dying, but I'll rest on this As I Lay Sleeping.

Amén.

4 comments:

  1. Hey buddy (I know I usually don't do nicknames, but since this is a different post style, I figured it's cool),

    As always, it's a pleasure to read, even if it's not your normal planned style. I think there may be a lesson in that (i.e. sometimes planning isn't the way how things get done). But mostly, I just wanted to say I can definitely understand where you're coming from and offer some encouragement.

    First, as far as communities go, I think one thing you can take comfort in is that while there are individual parishes, there is still unity with the Church at large. My longest stint with any parish was in undergrad and since then, I've been pretty mobile. But it's always nice to know Mass will be the same wherever and that in whatever short time I have with any given community, I am getting to know another portion of the Church universal.

    Second, as far as jobs and more stable living, don't sweat it too much. Apparently, we're in a time period where the market/economy is making it normative for this "adolescent" transition period to be longer. My only advice on that front is to not to get to obsessive over one position or location, otherwise you end up with mild panic attacks if something doesn't work out the way you hope (or at least that happened to me, but I really was on a tight deadline). Either way, you'll figure it out because God is figuring it out and you know how he likes to roll.

    Take care & many prayers to you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Kace.

    As for church, I definitely know what you're talking about, wrote about it actually in a blog here: http://catholicfriedrice.blogspot.com/2012/01/finding-church-in-universities-across.html


    And jobs, overall I'm actually pretty optimistic. We all just need to have our moments, rants :)

    Hope you're doing well! If you're ever in D.C. let me know and we'll hang. I'll bring Gian haha.

    Matt

    P.S. Did you tweet me some information? I accidentally deleted it and now can't find it. Send it to me again? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, I did: http://klout.com/MattAujero?n=tw&v=invite. Klout is supposed to help you keep track of your social media influence. I figured it would be good for you since you write a whole bunch and you're hoping to make a career out of it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great I checked it out...don't really get it though haha :)

    ReplyDelete