Yeah, you heard me, you're not getting me without a fight. About a year ago, some random person at some random bar in some random bar district in DC told me the following: "Yeah, so, in DC or rather the New England area, your problems just pile up - you worry, you work hard, you worry more, you try not to lose, then you wake up one day and you're 40. The best years of your life are gone. Welcome to DC!" I didn't fully understand the implication of this tid bit of advice masquerading as a silly stereotype until this week. This week, I found my voice of worry, and you know what? It's been there all along - we all have it, it's what drives us, and it is suppossed to be there. But in New England, that voice carries a megaphone and you are taught to assume if your voice is carrying a megaphone, the person's voice next to you is in possession of a subwoofer, and so on, until the whole point of the voice is no longer useful. In fact, you are in the middle of cold war over whose maniacal inner monologue will be heard. This demonstrates the ridiculousness of where I live.

So bump that. My point of moving here was not to be made into clam chowder. I have a feeling that the rat race is no more than a learned, convenient behavior that men (as a sex) latch onto due to our soft spot for anything repeatable and categorical. Which is why this will be a fight, make no mistake. In this corner: my intense desire to compete with everyone (because I'm a man) while at the same time attempting to beat my own nature (because I'm stubborn). In the other: a soul crushing, brain-liquefying, fun-sucking social epidemic and we're best friends. I don't want to swing first, but I can certainly recognize we're in the same ring together.