This blog has always been at war with Eurasia.
…Also, this blog has always used Eastern Time and will continue to do so, despite my having hopped back to Central Time and having no plans at present to return to Eastern Time.
Perhaps it’s also a sign that I haven’t worn a watch since moving back.
Being a mile and change from the nearest El station, it’s a wonder I manage to hit up locations outside of my home neighborhood. Well, locations that typically don’t have plentiful street parking, anyway.
I was just thinking about some of the up-and-coming neighborhoods, areas that you really didn’t want to touch with a fifty-foot pole back when I was growing up, like Bucktown and Wicker Park, and the increasingly revitalized districts just outside of downtown like Near North/River North. The vibe in any of these places are incredibly reminiscent of their counterparts in New York, which is no small feat considering the population advantage the city holds over Chicago. Time was when even those neighborhoods shut down to rest, but now it seems a jolt of energy has been provided by the gentrification of these neighborhoods.
And you know what? I really have little motivation to go to any of these places. Okay, so maybe what I really am is just lazy, but I like to give some credit to the layout of Chicago’s rapid transit system. It’s too…commuterish, I guess? What I mean is that it’s obvious that the system was designed to funnel workers from the outlying neighborhoods into the central business district and that’s it. Combine that with coverage that in my opinion doesn’t adequately fill the city and what you have is a system that works great for the people who live near it but everyone else pretty much has to take the bus (hardly a rapid transit solution).
If I wanted to go to Wicker Park (for instance) I’d have to take two buses. If I wanted to go to Wicker Park to drink then I’d have to take two buses that already run infrequently enough at night that it’d be a long ride home. It would be slightly better if I lived near the Red Line; then it’d be two trains, but I’d have to ride into downtown to switch to the right train. Or I could do a bus/train combo, which is still not exactly an ideal solution.
I suspect that I was spoiled by the incredible convenience (for the most part) of New York’s subway. Take a look at the system map and at first glance it might seem like a tangled weave of lines, but the practical upshot of it is that you can take the subway pretty much everywhere. I felt no hesitation about taking the A train to Inwood all the way from the Village, or moving all the way out to Jamaica* and commuting to school. The ride was long, but the bulk of the ride was spent on one train and trains are frequent enough during rush hour anyway so transfers aren’t really much of a slowdown, especially compared to the total trip time.
There are parts of Manhattan that can seem worlds away even though they’re really not. This illusion is in no small part caused by the lack of a direct subway path from point A to point B. The classic demonstration of this is the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side. All that separates them is Central Park, but they can seem like they’re on opposite ends of the earth just because you can’t get from one to the other by subway! (Easily, anyway.) If you wanted to, you could take a crosstown bus, but they tend to get very full very fast (on the East Side anyway) and they positively crawl along.
That’s pretty much how it feels for me here back at home. There are perks to this location, like being a stone’s throw away from the lake, but going anywhere by public transportation is a bit problematic. Or, at the very least, rapid transit options tend to be less…rapid. There’s the initial hurdle of getting to the El station, which is a fifteen-minute walk minimum (a bus will take the same amount of time or worse if you factor in wait time and traffic). But then, in order to keep the trip reasonable, you’re limited to destinations located on a rail line, for which fortunately a good number of major attractions qualify, but a lot of neighborhoods still feel like they’re worlds away.
By the way, I hate buses. It always seems like I’m waiting forever for a bus.
* The F train goes all the way out to Jamaica, and I can get to Manhattan for a buck fifty. Or, at least, I used to. It’s two dollah now.
(Totally unrelated, but came up while I was doing research for this entry: Queensboro Ballads by Levi Asher. Wonderful read–at least, I think so.)
So I’m thinking hey it’d be cool if I got the job with GE after all the interview seemed to go pretty well and I have a shot but I really don’t want to get too attached to things that haven’t been decided yet not only that but they’re also out of my control so the only thing to do is to keep on keepin’ on but really there isn’t much to do in my life so I think about the coulda-woulda-shoulda’s and also the could-be’s including but not limited to “wouldn’t it be nice if I got the job with GE” though it’d be pretty stressful but at the same time I am really enticed by the opportunity to put some hard work in some real tangible projects and then I think but I’ve been back in Chicago barely a month and I’m just starting to get readjusted and starting to actually put down roots which I haven’t done since maybe ’99 or 2000 back in New York and if I get the job at GE then I’d have to uproot myself to Wisconsin which really isn’t that far from Chicago but the majority of my days would be spent there so it would effectively be moving out of Chicago and do I really want that?
Well, yeah… I do believe that the position with GE would be more rewarding, and I’m not just talking financially. But I’m sure that God will tell me what I am supposed to do, in a directive that takes the form of a job offer with GE, or lack thereof… I don’t recall the last time that I really had choices… most of the major decisions I’ve had to make have been no-brainers for the most part.
The interview went better than I expected–I wasn’t raked over the coals too much. I left a positive impression on the head of the group, but it remains to be seen whether I make the grade (there are apparently 10 or so people applying, and there are two open spots).
It’s time to play the waiting game now. Anyone free to do stuff?
Driving up to Waukesha (that’s in Wisconsin just outside of Milwaukee for you non-Midwesterners) for an interview with GE Medical Systems tomorrow. I’m not hoping for much, just to get through a full day’s worth of interviews (plus I get to deliver a 30-45 minute presentation about my previous work) without soiling myself. Time to switch into full-on hamming-it-up acting mode. Wish me luck!
My short time spent existing can probably be broken down into the following chapters:
Chapter 1: A Kid Grows in Chicago. I don’t remember a whole lot from growing up, and I can’t form anything coherent to describe what I do remember.
Chapter 2: Oh No, the Corn! Paul Newman’s Gonna Have My Leg Broke! Three years at a school for speshul pepul. My formative teenage years were spent surrounded by cornfields that were in the process of being torn down in favor of SPRAWL. Oh, and I got a good eddjukation, too.
Chapter 3: Oim Onna Conah O’ Toidy-Toid An’ Toid. Chapter three is the last five years of my life; four spent in New York with an epilogue in Pittsburgh. It is best characterized as “A New York Minute (Eastern Standard Time).”
Chapter 4: Jupiter And Beyond The Infinite. (Work in progress)
With chapter three concluded, let’s discuss what we’ve learned…
(Continued)
I’ve been living in the offline world the past couple of weeks, and I expect to be there for awhile–or until the DSL gets installed, whichever comes first. I haven’t gotten the modem to work on my Linux box and the other computing devices here are…old. I’d prefer not to have to put up with them, but I’m doing so now so I can post an entry to ye olde weblog.
Short form: I’m back in Chicago, figuring out my next move. I’ll write something more when my system’s back at 100%…there’s probably a lot to write. Pittsburgh, I hardly knew ye; take comfort that at least I think you’re better than Rochester, NY. In the meantime, the clocks have been set back one hour, prime time is an hour earlier, and the land is flat but I’ve got a big lake in my front yard.