fresh is the new stale.

ever attempt to start fresh so many times it becomes routine?

i am thankful. in the noted ugliess of bedbugs, some wonderful things have emerged. i now live with my sister on the uppereast side of Manhattan. the subway ride to my job is 14 minutes instead of 45. i have a job that i love. my apartment was newly renovated and free of all bugs. the kitchen is enormous enough to host Top Chef--or atleast enormous for Manhattan. i have a cell phone that wasn't made in 1991 anymore. the yankees are world champions.

yada yada yada, a world of awesome is at my finger tips.

i'm not bragging about how awesome my 'new' life is, which it is. but when you have made as many fresh starts as i have, and my family has, you duck. you know the other shoe is going to drop and you don't want to plunked when it does. you also learn that fresh starts are purely a mindset thing regardless of how many trips you take to furniture geniuses at IKEA and the moderately trendy and always affordable Kohl's. i started my job two days after moving in, so maybe i just haven't had a chance to catch my breath. but 'another fresh start' feels like 'another period of time until something throws me off track.' making so many attempts at the fresh start that changes everything makes the process rather stale.

this can stem from two places, and i am feeling the pinch of both. first, there is the multiple and simultaneous fresh start syndrome. second, there is "new begginings" thatall come back to the same issue. let's dive in.

new job. new apartment. new stage of life overall. and it gets kind of old.
ripping your life up by the roots can change your perspective on everything. or on nothing at all. sometimes, you feel exactly the same and the circumstances are changing. you still feel stuck, just in a different context. pieces of your life may change--home can be in a different direction, your every day life can take on an entirely new color, and aspects of your personality may change. but there is still that naggging feeling that won't dissipate. and the only thing you can do is coach yourself into trying to feel as great as everyone perceives you feel. except maybe of course for the people who see straight through you, and even they can be fooled. if you are trying to fool yourself for your own betterment, you probably throw them off too. you can only try and convince yourself that this fresh start stays permanently fresh and that the clouds overhead will pass as long as you don't step outside. and you are probably going to stay inside and eat whole pizzas and listening to John Mayer's "Something's Missing." and that is most certainly the same old same old.

our other scenario probably sucks more. it's when you attempt to start over with the same issue or person over and over and over again. and over again. being held back by an issue is no walk in the park, and it usually requires time and hard work. it can hold you back for the smallest incriments of time or forever and ever. grasping how to 'get out' is hard because most of these issues are external, but you have to invest in yourself to come to terms with things. chances are, if an issue has crawled under your skin (bed bugs are now showing up in my writing) then chances are the issue is irresolvable and the only thing you can change is how you cope. when you are pulled down and drowing in the waves of emotion, you are blind to this concept. which is why therapists make so much money. and also probably why you are listening to City and Colour's "Constant Knot."

when it's a person you are trying to start over with, the pain is equally as vivid, but the brightness is sustained because you now have a "past" a questionable and somewhat temporary present, and a future that is directionless, and your compass will have you pointing every which way. whether it's a romantic connection that you have, think you have, or think you should have, or just a delicate friendship that feelings like its breaking, or even already broken in the balance, the pain of interpersonal turmoil it a "different animal," because it's alive. hoping like the "different animal," but chances are if you are attempting to start anew with another you may be beating a very dead horse. or maybe not--maybe one crack of the whip will change everything. maybe a new start with the old will bring the kind of clarity you cannot pay for. but that is not in our control, and attempts to continue doing so don't leave your fresh starts stale, but in regression. it's never fun when you feel more pathetic for the experience. and it's probably why you are listening to Boys Like Girls "Love Drunk." but you SHOULD be listening to Ari Hest's "I Forgive You" or Charlotte Martin's "The Dance." and you know you shouldn't be listening to Love Drunk ever but it's secretly hiding on your IPod with Gwen Steffani's "Hollback Girl" and Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You" on a guilty pleasure playlist.

just seek therapy when you get to Miley Cyrus--she ain't far off.

-k.