Struggle Sees the Light

One of my favorite television shows, Happy Endings, had a line in it this season that almost perfectly summed up my feelings about the universe. One character says to the other, "And to what degree of shambles would you say your life is in?". And that's how I feel most of the time. It's not a matter of "are you okay" it's a matter of "how much of a struggle are you undergoing, is it the labors of Hercules or is it trying to get a prescription pill bottle to open" (PS: Prescription/vitamin/painkiller companies, according to Jewish law I've been an adult since my Bat Mitzvah so WHY DOES CHILD SAFE PACKAGING STILL ELUDE ME?). So you must trust me when I say this has been a strugglesome year and know that I truly really deeply mean that on many levels.

You know, when I was young, I kind of assumed that the older you were, the more you would have figured out. And in college I thought, it's okay that everyone around me is an enormous struggle because soon enough we will have graduated and then we will get everything together. But now, having worked for the past year with a group of strangers, adults, people who really should by all rights be complete human beings by now, I understand that that was all a lie. Because people? Are a flipping mess.

Maybe it's because I work in the non-profit sector, specifically in arts management (by the way, shoot me in the FACE with arts management, my god, some days you step out of a meeting having just spend two hours arguing about what to do with audience surveys and concept of surveys in general, emotionally, artistically, financially, spiritually, and you think, aren't people starving, somewhere?), but the people around me sometimes seem like they are back in high school. Which I suppose is what happens when you spend your life playing pretend and drinking whiskey. Still, that's no excuse for not paying your gas bill, or doing your laundry once a month, at least, or, I don't know, having an honest conversation about your needs? As a person? In life? I just don't know. But if this is adulthood, i.e., just like adolescence but with more bills to pay and more concerns to have, well, I don't think I want any part of it.

So I'm going to graduate school. Just gonna extend my pre-adult life for as long as possible. I've see the other side, people, and I'm not having anything to do with it. Instead, I'm going to go to playwrighting school i.e. clown college and pretend that reality is indeed the stuff of dreams.

Still. I'm going to NYU-Tisch to join greasy hipsters and pretentious poets and learn how to write for Law and Order. I'm sure that's not going to be a struggle AT ALL. Smooth sailing. Bring it on. And until then, there is the summer. Stay tuned, people, I know I've got a lot more to say these days.

All that being said, check out some particularly strugglesome photos I've shot recently:

Oh good god.

Something about all of these people eating just really perturbs me. 

I don't even know how to say what the best part of this image is. The guy? Is HE the Messiah? The website? Or the fact that there is a NUMBER you can call? To, I assume, SPEAK to the Messiah? God, who even knows. 

But hey, that's some good news, right? Whatever other struggle is happening, at least the Messiah has come!