boo.

for the last week i have been having an existential why-am-i-in-school crisis. i was talking to angeli about the guilt that children of immigrants feel. i am lucky in the respect that i am doing something i am really interested in in grad school, and have not been forced into med. or law school by pushy parents, but still, if we get to the bottom of the most unpractical, unrealistic dreams that you are supposed to follow in your 20s, i always wanted to be a writer. and i try to write, but the only time in the last several years i really wrote something was when i had a month of free time this summer. and i loved writing, i wrote 200 pages in a month. and i have no time when i am in school. and then when i am done i will be in a rat-race for jobs and tenure. which will be even more difficult for me, because i really really want to live in new york. like, make my life here. i can't imagine being happier anywhere else. but considering how hard it is to get an academic job, that will limit my options. and i don't want to be one of those people who moves somewhere for a job "oh, it's just for a couple of years" and then inertia and life take their course and they end up staying there, perhaps complacent, but never truly happy and tingling to be in the place where they are. new york makes me tingle, and no other place does. i don't even like most places. i really like london, but i don't want to immigrate again, permanently. i find san francisco blah, maybe i'll want to live there when i am 50 and more mellow, but now it's just too hippie for me. that goes for all the west coast. L.A. already tried and hated it. chicago is okay, and my family is there, but it ain't new york. anyway, i've just been anxious about that. what's the point of 3 more years in school if at the end of it i will be forced to choose between a job and a place to live? but it's not like i can leave school now and be like "i'm gonna be a starving writer!" most "starving" artists i know aren't starving because their parents can afford to support them. privileged kids can afford to "slum" artistically. this train of thought is going to turn me into a marxist. blah