Status Quo

To hinge off my last post, which I inadvertently turned into a rant about the USPS, I would like to add to it. Seeing my thoughts written out sometimes helps me realize just what is going on in my head and reading once over the last post, as it turns out, the USPS rant is actually a part of a much larger vendetta I have decided to hold against progress (or the illusion of progress). While living in a densely populated, urban, municipal area, a never ending theme of "not yet, but later" presides over the landscape. Being so close to so many people, so many news papers and billboards, one is constantly faced with ideas of the future.

While on the train, I find myself surrounded by advertisements for what will someday be; that structure that will look so good and be so cool to live in, the walking path complete with an array of swell pocket parks, coming in 2013. I chuckle to myself and silently play with a funny yet scary thought; funny in that I will no longer reside here in this city when this or that is finished, but scary in the sense, but what if I am still here?

I find it easy to become frustrated and quick. I have never described myself as an angry person or even punchy, but in the last few years I have developed this hulk like ability to go from zero to one hundred in seconds in regards to my general mood. This is usually centered around time, specifically, my time. I have never described myself as being selfish with my stuff either, but after living in the city and truly beginning to feel the real gravity of time, the difference between work time and my time has become very vivid and the feeling of others picking away at my time some days makes me feel like I'm running home with a piece of bread and along the way, constantly, there are these birds picking at it and there's nothing I can do to stop them. The piece gets smaller and smaller, until finally, I just have a bite to myself.

Everything in the city takes longer. One time, out of sheer stupidity, I logged onto Google Earth and looked up a map of the house I grew up in and the surrounding area. I measured out one mile. I then pulled up a map of my neighborhood in Chicago and proceeded to measure out one mile. I realized (not that I didn't know this, nor did I need such a vivid visual aid) that a distance that could easily take me twenty minutes to half an hour to cover in the city for years growing up in Ohio, took less than one minute. "Chicago is stealing my minutes," I thought to myself.

Not that this is any epiphany. There's no mystery. More people, more cars, tighter streets, of course it takes longer, you'd have to be an idiot to get mad over it. But I was mad over it. I guess between the more expensive but not better which we've seen exemplified by the USPS and the CTA and the theme of the fact that we all work so hard only to have, on top of our pay, our time whittled down by, what seems to me, laziness and incompetence. Something snaps when I have to look and and listen to ideas of the future and doomsday construction plans for the highway system in order that it might accommodate everyone.

The hard truth is, nothing will ever change about any of this. All the work that is done, all the delays, the construction, everything that slows me down and makes something like a commute take even longer than it should take (which is too long to begin with), only serves to maintain an already pathetically low status quo. Once the freeway opens back up to full capacity, it will still take an hour and a half to drive out of the city. When the CTA finishes its renovations, it will still take forty minutes to an hour to get down town from my apartment (about seven miles). This makes me want to leave. This makes me utterly unamused by any future plan regarding municipal bliss.

I've picked up biking, but sometimes I feel like it's just a matter of time before some lazy fool decides that he doesn't have to/feel like checking his mirror or blind spot, and he's just going to change lanes and that could be my life. One stupid, unthoughtful, selfish move which probably only equals the progress of one car length (and a lot of people calling you a jerk), and someone ends up maimed. I ride slower than I used to.

I guess it's just hard to think of living among such a great populace, which calls itself advanced, yet none of us are looking out for each other. The public transit system has ceased serving the public and has delusions that it's a corporation seeking only profit and self gain. The mail system after being reprimanded for its shoddy service stated that its records were out of date, which, is sort of a paradox if you ask me. What "records" are they talking about? Hopefully not addresses considering the public does that part of the job for automatically (i.e. the address).

I miss living out, away from all of this. As much as a double standard as this is, this is how I feel; I miss just not caring and not knowing. Sometimes I feel like cities are that family that you hung around with for a while, some of their kids were cool, but, ultimately, they were sick and dysfunctional, and as time went on and as you got older you realized that they were never going to do anything to really help themselves or really change anything. They kept their problems because, you supposed, they were used to them. Finally you said screw it and found other hobbies.

Skimming over this entry, I realize that, in short, it's terrible. But who cares? I realize that I'm not always on but I still want to eek this stuff out, yet I don't want this to become some diary of daily events (Steve just got up to get a glass of orange juice, today I realized I suck more than I did yesterday, here's why in three simple, yet quotable ways). To put in just one more double standard, I suppose it's okay for me to once in a while just take that right turn, hard and fast and without checking my blind spot, mirrors or wasting that second to put the blinker on (it's my second, mine, my precious), I want to write damn it, and its' going to be horrible to begin with.

At the very least, I suppose I can count my blessings that one, the city is consistent, which is comforting and it changes slowly, like myself. I can't totally complain about how long it takes them to re-build a train station, it took me a year to buy a pair of shoes.