Oh It's On!

A strange thing happened today. The apartment was feeling a bit stuffy, so I went to open the window. I instinctively braced myself, anticipating a rush of cold air. It never came. Instead, I felt no discernable difference between the temperature inside and the temperature outside. This has by no means been a cold winter, but there's no denying that spring has sprung. In an act of utter meteorological defiance, I broke out the flip flops.

I love this time of year - baseball's ramping up and college basketball is shifting gears to March Madness. It's quite frankly a feeling I don't recall experiencing last year. I hate to admit it, but I think I had two 2010s and went straight into 2012. I have very few distinct memories from 2011 - everything is in someway contextualized by work. Moammar Gadhafi, Kim Jong-Il, and Osama Bin Laden all died? Oh, that should help market The Dictator. Republicans and Democrats duked it out till the eleventh hour on a debt ceiling deal? If it's anything like Nucky Thompson's office, can't we just call in our stand-by construction guys to pull the ceiling? Oh wait... There were riots in the UK? Uh...I worked for some Brits.

Now I know I'm exaggerating a little bit - and perhaps taking important world events a bit lightly - but looking back on it, that was how last year unfolded for me. 2011 was unrelenting. After a pretty relaxed January, I started up on Boardwalk, got a week between that and The Dictator, and just a couple of days before I had to move to Pittsburgh. Next thing I knew, I was ringing in 2012, and I had no idea where the last year of my life had gone.

I had missed every seasonal transition last year, locked away in some artificially-lit, windowless, black-box stage. Which is exactly why opening the window today was such a surreal experience. I had a front row seat as spring burst onto the scene - the sun was in full bloom. I have about a week and a half before jumping back into the working game, and there's no telling what pace I'll keep for the rest of the year, but today was revelatory. My faith in seasonal-change has been restored, whilst my seasonal affective disorder has been squelched.

Back in Business

"It must be weird," my brother said to me. "You go from 0% to 100% back to 0%."

I scratched my days' old beard growth and thought to myself, I need a job. It is the sad truth of this existence I lead. When I am working, I am non-stop for about 3-4 months. But then when I'm not working, days go by without me even realizing it. It's the weekend? Oh cool.

I've been out of the workforce for almost 2 months now, and while the first couple days - weeks, I'll admit - were sorely needed and gratefully welcomed, the time since has been agonizing. I've beaten every video game I own, I'm through Season 1 of Breaking Bad, I've begun writing again, anything to occupy my time.

And finally my patience paid off. As of Thursday, I know now that I have a job on the horizon. While I obviously can't go into specifics about what the job is, I hear it's going to be a lot of night shoots (yikes), on a lot of rooftops (eesh), and my "weekend" will be Wednesday-Thursday (ugh). But it will be a break from this current monotony, and I welcome it with open arms.

The job does not start for another few weeks, but the prospect of employment has galvanized me to become a more productive person. I've reconnected in the past couple of days with old work friends over lunch, drinks, what have you. I've been boning up on my geopolitical acumen - watching the daily gamut of political punditry unravel unfold on my TV and computer.

And last night, I ventured out to Columbia, to catch the penultimate Ivy League game between Harvard and the Lions. Harvard's looking to snap a 65-year NCAA tournament drought, but Columbia was itching for an upset. In front of a packed-house crowd, which included such luminaries as Spike Lee and Jeremy Lin, Harvard pulled out the win, showcasing dunks and overall gameplay uncharacteristic of the Ivy League games I used to watch.

So I'm back, o blogosphere. With so much to look forward to - spring, baseball, March Madness (con Harvard, fingers crossed), and a job - I'm breaking out of hibernation. Unfortunately, so is the mouse that lives in our apartment. But I'll leave that for another day, I've got too much going for me right now.