2001-05-16 - 7:31 p.m.

Ok, here it is...

The Project

Season one

Foreword

What follows is a chronological retelling in excruciating detail of Oldgreedy�s life in the past two months. Some of these things you may have heard or read about already, but do not be alarmed. The story begins today and continues with new installments every couple days, probably, until I run out of things to say or catch up with the present time.

Editor�s Note: The editor would like to say that he makes no grand claims about the intrinsic value of the documents contained herein. They are often choppy and self-indulgent. The reader should not hesitate to stop reading at any point, for any given reason or no reason at all. They are as much for me as anyone else, to have a projected audience on which to throw things and gain practice. They are only an attempt to do one�s best.

Author�s note: The author would like to add that those who do choose to stay should devote a reasonable amount of attention to it, some level of energy between reading a billboard and watching a play. No chatting with more than, say, four people at a time while reading. The author would also like to apologize for his startling lack of metaphors, onomatopoeia or active verbs. His attention and imagination have their limits.

Main Character�s Note: The main character would like to state here and now that those who come into contact with him should beware. You are hereby fair game. You have invaded my celestial sphere, or I have invaded yours, and I will train my suspicious eye on you. I will probe your mind and expose its contents. Or, if you make me very happy, perhaps I may make you look good.

Vendor�s Note: If you enjoy this sort of goofing around, read the much-heralded �A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius� by Dave Eggers, which I count as the biggest influence on the preceding several paragraphs, and perhaps the several that follow.

And now, take your seats and relax, get ready to have your MINDS BLOWN~

Introduction

(in which our young hero gets a headache and quits his job, and we all feel very, very sorry for him)

I�m probably not going to die. I know that.

But laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling for hour after hour, listening to the radio endlessly repeat the day�s news, hearing the sounds of the buses and horns and shouts wash over me like the ocean through my fourth-floor window, the idea lingers. It just sort of parks itself there, a little academic exercise for me to pursue. I could be dying, I tell myself.

My head doesn�t hurt that bad. But bad enough that whenever I stand up I get sick, so I am left to lay in bed and think about these sorts of things. I�ve never spent so many waking hours in the same place, just laying there, watching the clock tick, with nothing much to occupy my mind but pondering this mysterious headache. This brain tumor. This inoperable brain tumor.

So I�m going to die. That�s bad, I guess. The worst thing about it will be telling my parents. I will have to wait until I know they�re both home and let them know together. I�ll be on the speakerphone, saying, I have some bad news, Mom. I have a tumor. Actually first I�ll beat around the bush, then I�ll blurt it out, I have a tumor, then there�ll be disbelief, then we�ll all start crying. Then everyone will be told � they�ll tell my sister Liz, who is just 14, and she will be devastated, and my brothers and other relatives, and each one will be deeply affected, have his world shaken by me. I will have to tell my friends, one by one, who will also sit in disbelief and rail at the world, but also pull together and tell me how much I am loved. Everyone will visit me in my deathbed, and I will feel a bit embarrassed. I will tell them I have lived a good life, a full life, and there�s nothing to be sad about but it�s so sweet that you are. Then I�ll fade away, plucked from this life in the flower of my youth � who knows what greatness I may have seen? I will be eulogized in song by my songwriting friends, in poems and stories by my writer-friends. They will carry on the torch of the lessons I strove to teach through my living, and would have done, had I been allowed to live.

The most distressing aspect to the whole scenario is, in fact, the having to tell people about it. After that, I find much of the idea of dying young appealing, if only as an academic exercise.

To be taken from the earth so young; to know that your life was not meant to be, to be remembered for your infinite potential and not for what you did or did not do to realize your potential in your life. It would be so freeing to die. It wouldn�t fit to commit suicide � then you are responsible for your own death. But to get an inoperable brain tumor at 24, now, that�s something you can never predict or plan for. I could not be held responsible. I would be freed of the responsibility of having to do anything with my life, of having to realize that infinite potential I have been cursed with, that hangs over my head and cripples me. Failure is much more frightening than death.

For several months now, something has been wrong. I have been driving to work, to a newspaper an hour from my apartment in Chicago, completing my assignments, letting my little free time dribble away. I do little on my own; I am simply available for whatever needs to be done, to write what I think people will want to read, to say what I think people want to hear, to listen to whatever they say.

And then, one day, when I�m out for a walk with some friends, and one couple goes off in one direction and the others go off in another, and I walk off on my own with nobody�s hand to hold, I begin to feel that I�m disappearing, becoming irrelevant, fading away. My potential of my youth is not being realized, nothing about me is being realized, and I think that maybe it is my fate to be a sidekick, to be always a friend but never a lover, to be the trusty chum who is always there for you, if you need a shoulder to cry or you need me to lend an ear, who can help you decide what to do in your life because he doesn�t have a life of his own.

But to be plucked by the hand of death before I can fade away, now that would make everything a lot easier. Then everyone would imagine what I could have done and who I could have been, and I wouldn�t have to have a life; a pseudo-life would be imagined for me and my infinite potential would be crystallized.

But it�s probably not true. It�s probably just a headache.

Nate, my roommate, comes in with a glass of Ginger Ale for me.

�How�s the head?�

�Pretty bad.�

�Maybe it�s a psychological thing. Maybe you�re worried about quitting your job.�

That�s the other thing. Just last week, I quit my job. It was a great job; great boss and great people. But I was sick of the security and complacency it gave me, sick of climbing this little professional ladder, sick of living a resume, doing what was expected of me. I would step out and do what I wanted to do for a change. So I had to quit my job.

I don�t think the two facts � my job-quitting and my headache � are connected. I�m not even scared of quitting my job. In fact, I�m, more than anything, just annoyed at this headache, because it is preventing me from enjoying this moment, these brief fleeting moments when I�m not sure what I�ll be doing next when I�m free and at the mercy of the winds of life, when I can become, for a few days or weeks, that ball of infinite potential again and not the real-life person who screws up that potential. I need to milk this sense of possibility when I can, because in a few weeks I will get scared that my resume is not being filled, that future employers will look down at me over their bifocals and say, �You did what? Just quit your job? After only a year and a half? That doesn�t sound like a team player.�

While my conscious is playing these little games, I wonder what my subconscious is doing. Is it causing these headaches, punishing me for my audacity in leaving the security of a job for the uncertainty of the unforgiving world? Should I go back to work and tell my boss that on second thought, I don�t want to quit my job any more, that having to worry about what to do with myself just gives me a headache and I�d better just keep on with the routine?

But the hours slip by, and then a few days, and I don�t say that to my boss, even a few days later when she offers me the chance, I just let it slide, let myself go fatalistically into this world of uncertainty, where I can�t even be sure if I�ll live another year because I could have a brain tumor, and while I�ve only got a few months to live, I might as well make the most of it, not fade away, but do all the things I never would have done and have, for a little while anyway, a life.

I let my days at my old job dwindle and disappear, and the headache seems to be slowly, slowly fading, And on my first day off after my job ends, I head for the hospital, strip to my underwear and socks, don a hospital robe and get my head examined.

I feel the same curiosity, never really believing there could be something in there, but letting the thought linger, like it has been lingering for weeks. They strap down my head and roll me into the MRI, the soft-rock station gently streaming into the earphones, for about an hour. Then the technician comes over, pulls me out and unstraps me. I am searching her eyes, because suddenly I realize I am expecting her to tell me, right here and now, whether or not I am going to die. My heart starts pounding � I am nervous for the first time.

I search her eyes for the truth, any betrayal of the knowledge that she is looking at a tragic figure, who could have been so much if only things had turned out differently, the poor thing. But she just smiles and tells me I�m done, and the doctor will analyze the results and send it to my doctor. And I see that, yes, this is my cosmic retribution, that if I�m going to quit my job and start over again, I might as well start over again while knowing that I could be dying or I could be fine, but whatever the case I�d better make it count.

So I have stepped off the ladder for a moment, stepped off the trail that everyone has been encouraging me along all my life. I have stopped pointing myself in this direction which I have always known to be arbitrary and decided to take a look around.

This isn�t just the path I have been following all my life. This is the path of my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, who moved to America I�m not sure when, who started out at the bottom and looked up at that tall mountain of prosperity, that mountain that looked so forbidding, and there was nothing else they could do but climb it.

They struggled, I�m sure, and knew all along that as hard as they worked they�d never quite reach the top, but it was their life task to get up just as high as they could, and then pass the baton on to the next generation, who would begin their struggle anew and keep pushing for the top. They would be content in the fact that their life�s struggle would be for something, so that their children could have a better life than they had, have all the comforts and luxuries that they could never have.

And now, my great-grandparents have lived and died, and my grandparents grown up and grown old, and my parents have raised me and passed me the baton. I have been deposited at the top, without ever having had to struggle to get here and nowhere to look but down, and wondering just what should be done now.

To be simply placed at the top of the mountain without a struggle is to lose the very enjoyment of the climb. The same is true with the journey of life � those who begin with all they need, with money, education, supportive friends and family � lose the meaning of life that is drawn from the struggle. I had been deposited here at the top of the heap by my elders and expected to enjoy it. It is not that easy.

When I realized that the world was mine for the taking without struggle or uncertainty, I was spoiled. I lost my sense of purpose and became aimless, a drifter through life, with no obvious mountains to climb and no inner sense of what I should be doing. The idea of living a comfortable and affluent life lost its appeal. I needed that struggle, so I had to invent new ones, punish myself for my easy life and try to feel something. I needed to be reminded of what life is, not this spoiled easiness where you exert some effort, get a comfortable place and settle down, but a new, more difficult, if manufactured struggle.

Every step I�ve taken on my own has been in the name of the struggle, adventure. I quit my engineering major in favor of journalism, imagining myself finally taking this first step on my own, this baby step toward becoming my own person. But I hedged my bets, always making sure I had good job prospects and my parents� safety net. I went to work for a daily newspaper, and found myself with a struggle in an unfamiliar town. But slowly, I got used to it, and I needed a new struggle.

The happiest I�ve ever been was when my life became uncertain. When I resolved to quit my first job, a reporting job in Virginia, and move to Chicago, I was giddy, just knowing that I would have an experience. It lasted about six weeks, from the time I decided to quit my job to the time I got a new job. When people asked me what I would do, I would love to respond, I don�t know. Then they would praise my bravery and perhaps secretly think that I was being stupid.

So we packed our bags, three guys from Penn State, Nate, Andy and I, and moved to Chicago. We were each seeking our own adventures, me in journalism, Andy in music and Nate in theater, and we each had no idea how it would turn out. We moved in to Uptown, where the rent was cheap and the lake was close, and I went and got a job, but for a week we were in Chicago and we were alone and settling in.

The three of us walked from out new apartment to Lake Michigan, where a stairway of stones led directly into the blue expanse and you couldn�t even see Michigan on the other side. We had no phone yet, we hadn�t called our parents yet, nobody knew where we were. We were completely anonymous in this new, unexplored town, we could be anywhere but we were right here, staring off Lake Michigan, enjoying the moment. We were, once again, the infinite balls of potential, who could once again be anyone or do anything, reinvent ourselves, and I loved it.

But I got into my job and I started doing things and I began to realize that no, just moving into a strange new town where nobody knows you doesn�t really help you become a new person. You are still shackled by the same old fears, the same impulses, desire to please, the same expectations that you carry with you from every other place you�ve been before. You get afraid of what might happen so you start looking for the safe things to do, because nobody likes putting themselves in an unfamiliar situation, much less me; I love the idea of doing anything I want but when it comes down to it most of me just wants to be safe and comfortable.

But now, but now�

Now I will pull out of the haze and rediscover what it means to be alive. I will reinvent myself for real this time, not fall back on the crutches of old friends and security that let me lose sight of my goals. I have spent enough time being a spectator; now I will be a part of this world around me, do things I never would have imagined doing. I will make myself feel this life, however painful it can be, at least make myself feel the pain and not this muddy discontent that people like me always wind up in. I will commit to life, stop being a tourist, do something, and not giving a damn about fucking it up, actually try to fuck it up, get my hands in this life that I�m always reading about and observing and see what happens.

As the days tick by without a job, I begin to sense my mission. I realize that I shouldn�t be sending out my resumes to those boring companies, taking a breath only to climb up the ladder again. I will do whatever I want to do, and meanwhile figure out just what that is. It is my problem to figure out � what will I do with myself. It will be my project, just to live my life, figure out what it means to be alive. And though I haven�t figured out all this yet, all the pieces won�t click in place for a few pages yet, I will realize that such a momentous event as figuring out the meaning of your life, figuring out the meaning of life itself, must be recorded as it happens, because one�s life must be recorded to have any real merit. I will make my life into a work of art; I will be the star and director in the ongoing story of my life. I will make the decisions that fit the work of art, and I will let the work of art push me into new decisions that I would never make if I was just living my life, because I cannot let my audience, you, you who are reading my life practically in real time, I cannot let you down. I must make my life interesting for you, because I don�t care about myself, don�t care whether I live or die, but if I am living for your amusement, well, then, my life can be worth living.

And so, without any further ado, here it is, in real time, recorded as it is created, my attempt to make sense of the world as I live it. My Life, the project.

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