regarding hell and effort.

Part I: Hell

" Four blocks, run and hide, don’t walk alone at night. Cityscape, city change before they die." - Tegan & Sara, "Hell"

A few brief words on what it feels like for a girl - if the girl is me, anyway, which is the only sort of girl I know how to be. Today I walked through the Brooklyn blizzards into Greenpoint, and as I walked I thought about the route I take so often to friends' houses and favorite bars. To me, it's an eventless and innocuous journey, one I use to sort out the contents of my brain and fall in love with whatever's in my headphones.

Then there's the matter of what happens after you get where you're going. Sometimes, you'll find your female friends declaring that you're about to marry someone you've hung out with maybe twice. Other times, your guy friends are willing to grant you temporary dude (or sometimes better, "hot chick who hangs out with the dudes") status, but when you get up to leave the bar, they try not to let you walk the fifteen blocks home because they're certain you'll be raped, mugged, or worse.

"Four blocks, I should mention in a song if I want to get along with change, who doesn’t want to change this?"

Most of the time, you don't think about these things. A tiny percentage of the time, however, you wonder what you're more in danger of, getting married or getting mugged. You hope desperately that there's an in-between.

Part II: Effort

After I walked through the blizzard into Greenpoint, my friend Kate and I headed to the beer store to warm ourselves by a crackling fire (and, well, drink a beer). Somewhere in the course of conversation, I thought aloud about what it is that makes me well-liked at my job, as I know it isn't effort. "I don't think I try," I admitted. "I don't really think I ever try at anything."

This bothered me a great deal, leading me down the path of least resistance to a terrible mood and an early departure. Walking home (still, I might add, through further blizzard), I thought long and hard about things I have tried at, and I made a shortlist.

Things I Have Tried At:

• 1. Modern Deductive Logic. (Hardest thing ever.)
• 2. Boys. Not very many of them. In fact, I can count exactly three.
• 3. Classical Greek. (Second hardest thing ever.)
• 4. Happiness. I can't explain this one exactly but I've had people ask me, repeatedly, how I can be so happy so much of the time. I have never known how to say, "I tried."

By contrast, things I have not tried at include the bulk of those things I consider important: music, writing, most creative outlets, baking bread, philosophy, other people (most of the time)...the list is as long as the first is short.

Here is the part in most blog entries where I come up with an insightful and / or concise conclusion. This time, all I have to say is that this is a problem I don't know how to fix.