coda

A lot has happened since my last entry (not counting the story). I've accepted a job offer from Amazon, and shall officially go from student to gainfully employed next year. The determined stalker will at this point be able to piece together enough information about me such as I have ill-advisedly leaked into my blog entries over the years to uncover my identity. If he indeed goes to such lengths, congratulations to him. At any rate, I have just a few weeks left at GT - of college - of formal education - of being a student, which has been the only occupation I have known for as long as I can remember - , after which I officially become an adult and go-- back home. The circle of life will be complete.

My attitude toward growing up has always been one of resistance. To become an adult in my eyes is to reach a saturation point in one's life - to become boring. I saw it in my guy cousin when he had a kid. He just became so boring all of a sudden. Family man. Wrapped up in family matters. (When I told my dad, he said that my cousin had always been boring.) Speaking of "the Patels" or another set of neighbors in the plural. Exhibiting his kid in public. It was the kind of stultifying claustrophobia that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy and certainly wouldn't want to be caught up in myself. That's not to say that people who have found meaning and happiness in family are closed-minded and necessarily like my cousin. (I don't even why I'm propping him up as an example of everything one ought not to be: I like my cousin.) It's just not my thing. I can't see it becoming my thing for miles. At least not before I get Alzheimer's.

I have seen the symptoms of adulthood appear in my own life, which has me greatly worried, since there are no doctors for it. Even WebMD is loath to suggest that it might be cancer. For one thing, my brain structure has changed. I can feel it. The irreverent dignified nonconformist that I was in college - inspiring awe in everyone who stepped into my presence (or so I liked to think) - is gone. Now I am-- I can't even be sure what I am anymore. My writing has perceptibly deteriorated. The inspiration left me a long time ago, and now it looks like even the linguistic vitality is on the decline. Pretty soon there will be nothing left. Only an increasingly involuted LinkedIn profile and a marked tendency to use buzzwords where normal English words would have sufficed.