Boulder, you kinda suck

What do you do on a day off? I’m genuinely asking. I had one today, and I think I did it wrong.

I got up at 11, had cereal. Walked to 7-eleven to buy cigarettes. Painted. Took a bath. And called a friend. Now I’m sitting here, having done no homework and having applied to exactly zero jobs, feeling like I need to do something extravagant to offset the unending lameness I seem to have chosen. 

I could drink tequila and lament my losses, but I think instead I’ll paint my nails black and plot. I applied to my (pre-quarantine) favorite restaurant yesterday. I used to make bank waiting tables–people love drinking, but even more they love small women who are nice to them. I tend to get good tips, but man it’s been like two years since these noodle arms have carried a tray of half-raw meat. 

Regardless, my hope is that I’ll get the job, make money, and what? Letterpress and publish my own writing? Who the hell knows. 

I know very few things with certainty, dear reader, but one is that Boulder–my lovely, pseudo-hippie, performatively activist Boulder, is wearing on me. I’m hoping that a job change will help, but I’m wary–I’ve seen all of it. 

Why are my calves so chiseled, dear, sweet reader? I walk EVERYWHERE. I have no car, and so I have seen every inch of Boulder’s sidewalks so many times. It is all overpriced. It is all terribly sad. 

Boulder treats its unhoused population–which is, per capita, incredibly large–like trash. There was a city-wide ban on tents in public spaces. One has to test negative of any drug use before being allowed into a shelter. Hippies? I think the fuck not. 

I wonder if this is everywhere. I’ve only lived in a handful of cities–mostly in New York–but they’ve seemed kinder to me. Even so, I don’t think I’ll go back to New York right now. The mountains and my buddhist art school keep me. My best friend lives half an hour away, and that keeps me too. 

I remember two years ago this week, Kaity (best friend) and I were becoming fast friends. We hated ourselves, but we loved each other. We saw in each other what we could not see in ourselves–have you ever had this experience? It’s really something, seriously. I think maybe this is why I’m so eager to point out beauty when I see it–why I write about a boring day off, or why I never hide how I feel about the people in my life. What if they don’t know? What if they don’t know the ways that they are beautiful? I really don’t give a fuck that I’m embarrisingly earnest. I like myself that way.

I’ve been looking into teaching jobs too, beautiful reader. Substitute teaching, tutoring, working in a preschool–I know this is where I’d like to be. I remember a summer job I had in New York, doing art with kids who didn’t have a place to go during the long summer days. All they wanted to hear was that they were okay–that they were okay and good at something. We drew for hours–coloring or sketching flowers and trees. I told them they were incredible, and I’d watch them change. 

I think that, in order to be happy in Boulder, and to find a job or write in a way that means something to me, I have to remember why I’m here. My best friend. My school. The mountains. I’m here to do something. On the days I don’t spend working soulless retail, I have to remember what brought me out here. 

I wanted to start over. I wanted to be okay. I wanted to be beautiful, and good at something. And so on my day off, I walk. I buy cigarettes. I paint. And I write to you.

I love you, dear reader. 

Take good care.