is the hazing over yet?

Aaaah, life. So funny sometimes. You work so hard to get to the top of something until you finally become one of the biggest, baddest kids around, and then you graduate and get thrown back down to the bottom of a pile that is exponentially larger than the last. Yesterday in spinning class (say what you will, but it's the only way i can get my lazy ass to the gym), the chick next to me was complaining about the heat, and the mid-to-late-thirty-something instructor says, "But sweat is good for you. Look at her [referring to me and my copious perspiration, probably a result of my copious Marlboro Lights consumption] and how young she looks. Then again, she's probably, like, 12."

For me, the transition from big, bad high school senior to lowly college freshman was an easy one, as it was aided by much tea from Long Island and a new intense (i.e., masochistic) passion. The trasition from big, bad college senior to one whose skin elasticity inspires jealousy in mid-to-late-thirty-something spinning instructors has not been so easy. Somehow I'd gotten the crazy assumption that by 22 I'd have figured out some things. Some things have indeed been learned, but I feel like I knew myself better when I was a teenager. I was a granola lovin' vegan, studied foreign languages for fun, planned to go to college in my favorite city, and was going to be Very Rich and Important. Now, I eat my bagels with cream cheese and smoked fish, can barely even remember English grammar, much less Russian, have "plans" for the future that last about a week and a half, and am probably going to give up a career that provides an easy path to become Very Rich, if not also Important. In the past I'd always been working toward something and belonged somewhere, and now it's like I'm floating aimlessly in a little bubble (a fun bubble, at least) and have no fucking clue when it'll pop and where I'll land.

Okay, that's enough trite cheesiness for one day. If, by any chance, it didn't sufficiently nauseate you, I'll end with this: Yesterday I saw Fatboss, who sits an arm's length away from me, Q-TIPPING HIS EAR. The inside of his ear canal. Next to me. At his desk. During the work day. Am I just being old-fashioned, or is that not really kosher?