Four wheeled fluster

So I’m getting worried about my car. It’s gotten such that, if I stop at a stoplight or something, and give it too much gas too fast when I start up again, the engine just stalls out. I really don’t need to have to worry about my car dying right now. Seriously, I can do without it. But if it does decide to give up the ghost on me, I’m going to need a new car. A used car, probably, because I don’t think I want to start payments on a new car if I’m going to be leaving the country in a couple years.

But what if I’m not? What’s this, you say? Not leaving the country? I’m going to Japan, yes, this much is certain, but the matter as a whole isn’t quite as uncomplicated as that. Once again I have found the urge growing to get the hell out of dodge and hit the road for a month or two, just me and my camera in the western US and Canada. It would be so fantastic, I would get so much out of it, but I don’t know if I want to put off going to Japan and grad school. If I did do that, I could justify a new car, but even then the thought of buying a new car doesn’t exactly thrill me.

The thing is, here in Chicago, I need some form of motorized transportation. A car is the most practical, though I suppose a motorcycle would work for me in all but the worst winter weather. It would be more gas efficieint, though. If I had a bike here, I could take the train reasonably close to most any place in Chicago I needed to get to and then ride the difference.

Blah. Like I said, I really don’t need this extra complication right now. Things are going well enough finding work, but not so well that I can just afford car payments on top of rent and other living expenses. Maybe when things pick up in another couple months…and by then I should have a better idea of what I’m doing and where I’m going. I hope so, anyway.

On the 23rd of this month I am hopping a bus to Columbus, Ohio, so I can visit friends in Athens for a few days. This is really the last time I’ll really be able to see all of them together…probably forever. I’ll come back on the 26th. It was suggested to me that I do this by Allen last week. Apparently the guys wnat to hang out, and Allen seems to think that it might help my current non-direction get resolved. I think he may be right. I certainly hope he is.

Because right now, while I’ve made a big step forward in moving to Chicago and starting to work freelance as a photographer’s assistant, it’s still just an intermediate step. An early intermediate step. Assisting isn’t something I want to do more than a couple years at most. At very most. Chicago isn’t where I want to be for more than a year or two. Who knows – I might even move to NYC for a year before I move to Tokyo. It strikes me that, after a year in Chicago, hopping over to NYC and doing assisting work there for a while is quite doable. But that’s another thing entirely.

What I’m getting at (I swear I am, really), is that where I am is closer to where I want to be than where I was before but still not close. I’ve got a lot of personal growth to accomplish as well as career shit to take care of. What do I need to do and how do I need to do it? At this point your guess is as good as mine, but I still know more than I did, say, a month ago before I even came here.

I’m still wrestling with certain questions – what is most important to me right now? What things are most important to me in the realm of my career? My personal life? What do I want to do? Where do I want to do it? And with whom? How should I approach the goals I decide on so as to maximize my chances of success?

I’ll get there – no doubt of that. It’s just the real-life shitty logistics of it all that keep screwing me up. The car thing, for example. A factor that I can’t really not deal with, but which is really only relevant in the immediate day to day life of the next couple years.

But then, nobody ever said it was going to be simple.

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