iamsosorry @iamsosorry - Tumblr Blog

I found this old piano in the alley behind my apartment last night, and it’s one of my favorite things that’s happened to me in a while. The music stand part of the piano was floating lazily by in the huge puddle I later had to tiptoe over, and the rain had quieted the usual ambient noise you hear echoing between my building and the streets that border it.

😍

#THINGSIMADE #Arrested Development #Gucci #charlize theron

#thingsimade #britney spears #shrek

#thingsimade #sarah palin #donald trump

#laura dern #thingsimade

Ciara smh kids were watching

#ciara #thingsimade

Where is it

#rihanna #anti #anti diary #thingsimade

great job on your audition see you in hollywood papi

#kanye #jennifer lopez #thingsimade #American idol

#2015bestnine

#thingsimade

Dollar burger

Tonight I did it without thinking; I gave in to muscle memory. Instead of coming in the front door after work, I put my shoulder to the door and sat on the front steps of my building. The street light that should illuminate my sidewalk is out. They’re not steps meant for sitting, and with the breeze down the boulevard, it’s not particularly ideal weather for plein air self-reflection. But for the past week or so this has been my nightly ritual: I get off the train a stop early, and when I finally reach home, I just sit in front of my door with my coat gathered around me, facing an increasingly dark street until I finally feel still enough to take the six flights of steps upstairs. Nothing of note is really happening on the street. It’s too chilly for casual joggers and the 9-5ers already vacated the sidewalks and have opened their Netflix apps. If anyone does pass the house, our faces are mutually nullified by shadow.

In the past month I’ve found myself alone more often than I’m accustomed to; definitely more than I’m normally comfortable with.

I got back from a Summer in Provincetown and realized that my friend group had all but dissolved. They’re still there, but not all on one big group text. I still see them, separately, but it’s an event. I’m solo-ing a lot. I’m having trouble remembering why I live in Chicago. I’m feeling very deeply what I’ve been telling people for almost five years: “Oh yeah this is just my job until I do my next thing,” but now I’m being honest that I have no idea what my “next thing” is. I’m very ready to jump, but I can’t seem to find a ledge that suits me.

I’ve told people at work that on my days off it’s been nice to “catch up on my reading,” which is my code for finding articles on my reader to busy myself with when I’m dining alone. Articles that give me a reason to nod thoughtfully when I pretend I don’t see the waiter coming closer to refill my water glass. (I guess giving the impression that my reading has purpose? That I’m working on something? I haven’t exactly parsed out the nature of my bullshit.)

Last week I treated myself to one of those solo dinners by taking public transportation up to the north side of town for Dollar Burgers at my favorite tucked-away gay bar. Mondays for Buck Burgers it’s a teeming mix of actual queers and adventurous straight couples who share a love of bargains AND feeling progressive. The train stop for the bar is in the middle of Chicago’s “Asia on Argyle”, and always seems to be in some state of construction. This visit was no exception. I turned out of the station onto the street, and found it completely gutted. It looked like some kind of infrastructure improvement that rendered Argyle into one long dirt moat, dotted with plywood bridges, each leading to its own phō restaurant, or beauty store, or cultural center, or that one huge liquor store with the most perfectly indelicate oversized neon sign. I joined a wave of commuters shuffling down the blown out asphalt, people turning sharply as they came to the bridge over the dirt that belonged to them. At one corner a lady yelled into a bodega from the street. “HEY! Boy! Tell those two guys in the back there it’s the lady in the wheelchair and she needs to talk to them, and they better come out this time.” The white dust of gravel and movement swirled up to our waists as we moved en masse to wherever we were supposed to be. I neared the bar where I’d be eating alone again and before I made my own sharp turn inside I looked up. It hit me all at once how much I loved it. How much I loved the LED glow of the tacky luxury-lite rehabs of old lakefront hotels, casting waves of inn appropriate fluo colors on the treetops. How much I loved the roadwork with its mess unapologetically laid bare, and the people who’d walk a plywood moat for good phō, and that there’s space for people who yell on the street, and people who refresh Twitter silently at a table for one, and it’s all on the same block. How much I loved my shitty dollar burger and a beer and a place to charge my iPad on a patio. I don’t know where to go next, but for the first time in a while right here is feeling nice for now.