INXS

No, not the band, but actually excess. Working in retail you can't help but think about excess. About people walking in with bags full of stuff, walking out with bags full of stuff. Buying, buying, buying. Heckling over prices from thirty to two dollars. It's kind of sickening when you begin to consider the amount of consumption in society. Mostly just the perverse excuse for culture North America has to offer, but there are some outer edges in which having is everything.
I believe that the longer one spends working in retail the more faith is lost in humanity. I'm at that point right now, and I work at an Old Navy, somewhere not even close to the top echel0ns of the consumer world, but perhaps observing from the bottom is key. Of all the Gap, Inc. chains, Old Navy is the only one to have increased in profits in the last year. It's cheap, people get more for less. I just find this mania to get more more more slightly depressing.
That's not to say that I don't still get the urge to sell my soul for that really exquisite pair of Manolo Blahniks. Because I do. Every time I see one. But the fact that we're all so obsessed with consumption has got me down.
Perhaps it's because I'm watching a thirteen year old British munchkin get the birthday of her dreams on My Super Sweet Sixteen. The only thing running through my mind is that this little Barbie-doll make up, St. Tropez tanning, Italian designer gown buying, flipping shit over a lack of a performer, swearing at her mother girl is only THIRTEEN. She doesn't even meet the age requirement of the show and yet she's talking about her Juicy Couture items and buying a Zac Posson gown while lusting after a Balenciaga bag. Alright, I'm dropping names slightly. But it's absolutely appalling to me that at only thirteen this girl has already discovered how to boss around party planners, name drop, and pinky wrap. And she gets literally everything she's after. (Probably due to the lack of "Daddy" to match "Mummy" - alamony, perhaps?) All I got when I was thirteen was low self esteem.
Some people have all the luck... and represents everything the average [over]consumer dreams of having.

Time.

It's incredibly terrifying how quickly it goes?
As I sit here watching the pilot of Heroes and listen to the tiny, enthusiastic, Asian man ramble on about time travel and how most people envision time as a straight line I realized just how long its been since I blogged. Immediately I sprang to defend it with just how busy I've been - two jobs, finally being able to exercise again, living my life, pondering just what I'm doing with my life - oh, hang on, tiny Asian man just teleported into a whorehouse and then claimed not to be a pervert. Amusing.
Anyways, my point was that no matter how time passes and how things manage to get in the way, it is your choices that bring it there. I probably could have found time to write, just like I could be finding time to do everything that I want to do. Which right now is a jumble of confusing things bundled with worries about how I will find the means to do them. Is it terrible to want to have an amazing life? I don't really think so. I think that everyone wants that. Everyone wants to make a difference and be remembered and feel worthwhile, but somehow time gets in the way of things.
Which brings me back to the time-as-a-straight-line thing. I just don't picture time that way. I think it's more composed of pictures. Think about it, you can be sitting here, like me, plotting your future, trying to imagine what it would be like to complete a double major, or say f*** it and run off to build houses in Peru, or go on exchange, and then you can go downstairs and eat some watermelon and look out at your teeny backyard and suddenly your four again, sitting with your Dad in your Grandma's old house, slurping messily on watermelon.
People simply don't exist in straight lines. We're all over the place. We're constantly transporting ourselves (much like the tiny Asian man) from point to point in time. It doesn't seem to matter too much that while physically, yes, we progress generally along a fixed "line" mentally we are going through something else entirely. Some people get stalled in the past, and some people are simply too fixed on the future to enjoy the moment, and those living just in the moment usually end up screwing themselves in the long run. I think that in order to properly exist we've all just got to live the life we picture for ourselves, without letting random choices get in the way.