Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1545
Apologies to Marx regarding depreciation, friends and their socialization habits, preparing for the drive home.
Hello hello hello! Greetings! Last day in Somerville. Leaving in three hours. Very excited to get home and look at all my record packages.
Can’t say I’m excelling at either of my new year’s resolutions at the moment, but there is always time to get back on track. Right?
Went out last night, friend’s birthday, new venue. Lots of confusion, double-booked birthday parties, understaffed bar. But I got to see a few people I hadn’t seen yet on this trip, and that was very nice.
It’s hard, this going out thing. There are sort of three circles on the venn diagram of middle-aged socializing: going out at night, going out during the day, staying in. Or maybe you could look at it through the prism of going out to venues or going out to people’s homes. Like many things, as we age, our habits in these regards harden. Some people like to go out in the daytime, lunches and playgrounds and such. Some people like to go out at night: dinners and bars and clubs and such. Some people don’t like to go out at all. Some people like to invite people over to their house.
I’ve been noticing as I age that a) people harden into a set of preferences with those habits, and b) most people harden into a subset of those actions.
When you live in a town and you have a bunch of friends in that town, over time, those preferences dictate when and how often you see friends. There are, of course, “important” events that necessitate people breaking their habits and going out when they don’t want to: birthdays of adults or kids, shows you want to see, church, whatever. So, over time, two people living in the same place will probably eventually see each other, but maybe only 2-3 times a year.
But when you don’t live in that town, and you’re visiting, well, all bets are off and if you want to see the people you want to see, you gotta do it on their terms, mostly. I mean some of them might come to you, but mostly you gotta go out to see the night owls, go to dinners at people’s houses to see the domestic ones, go to playgrounds to see the parents of young kids, etc.
A challenge, too, of course, is these things evolve as you age, and I have a ton of friends who I became friends with from going out all the time, but now they’re living in the burbs with kids, or have become homebodies, or have jobs that make them go to bed early, and then I gotta track em down in assorted suburbs and whatnot.
And this means if you’re the visitor, you might have to go see one person in the daytime, another for dinner, a third at the bar.
It is exhausting! And it really takes you out of your comfort zone.
BUT I think I managed to see everyone? Or almost everyone. Craig and Jane and Ashley and Brandon all had Covid, that monkey wench.
I am ready to go home.
(Just went to change the laundry the water supply inlet into the house dictates this but the side-by-side washer and dryer are on the wrong sides and the two doors open to block each other when you move your laundry from the washer to the dryer most unfortunate.)
It’s a balance, of course, or rather many people endeavor to find a balance: go out enough, stay in enough. Some people go all-in on both. I’m realizing on this trip that I never really had to find that balance that worked for me? Because I basically went out every night from 1990 to the day we moved to North Carolina, then I basically never went out again, except on trips and visits, where I went out every night.
So I am 53 and still finding that balance when in situations like our stays in Boston. This trip I think I went out.. mmm five nights out of 17? Not bad. Feel like I coulda gone out one or two more nights but a) no compelling events forcing people out, b) August, c) I am lazy.
Oh also! Ran into my excellent, decades-spanning friend Ivelise, who is a reader of GMHHAY and a member of the Slack group. That is always so fun because you are having chats with a friend who you haven’t seen in three years then suddenly you’re talking to someone about your studio build or some other topic you’ve not really talked about at all in your small talk. It is a pleasant thing to run into a person who is fully up-to-speed on your personal life yet you’ve not seen them in ages. Nice gift from GMHHAY. More people should do it. You’d enjoy it.
Though the labor to write one of these things is monstrous, monstrous.
I will miss the walking here. It is absolutely insane. I have tripled my average step count from home — and I get a decent amount of steps at home! But here, it’s so nice out, and there is that lovely trail right behind the house, I find myself walking up and down the bike path all day when I am on work calls. I walked to Davis Square three times yesterday. Then I walked to Porter with Sean. Almost walked home from the evening event in Harvard, but I was hitting my bedtime and I need to be rested for this twelve hour (if we’re lucky) drive home.
Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!
We are listening to… Well, we are not listening to anything yet. Been busy running around. Let’s see what’s next in the ole queue. Oh yes. I am listening to an artist called Ora the Molecule. Mighta been a Nicky Digital recommendation. Club album. Called Dance Therapy. It is good. I would totally like to dance to this album. Make a megamix and I could dance to the whole thing at Da Club.
Slowly working my way through Marx. It is… I dunno, I was reading it at first, carefully absorbing every tenet of the theory, and weighing it against reality and judging him harshly. I am sort-of out of practice reading fundamental economic texts. I did a bunch of it in college, when I got my econ degree, and then another batch twentyish years later when I was working on my unfinished magnum opus advertising economics book (will finish someday, honest). Both of those times had a certain vibe to them: college was a brutal round-robin tournament of ideas, judged harshly and ruthlessly against reality. And, of course, most of them were found wanting, because classical economics is kinda not real. And that is how I’ve been reading Marx, except now I have a much more comprehensive sense of what is real in economics, thanks to the developmental economists, the behaviorialists, etc. Saints Sen and Kahneman and whatnot. In that sense, I am way too harsh on Marx.
And I owe Marx an apology cuz I made a dig the other day about Marx not gasping depreciation and then I got to this part where you can sense him sort of inventing or discovering depreciation, though of course he gives it some dumb Marx name: it’s funny how Marx thinks of a bunch of concepts but we never use his naming for most of them except the Communist stuff. So, you know, maybe I should not critique books whilst in the middle of them, give ‘ole Marx a little benefit of the doubt.
Which I also must do when reading him through the prism of most of my late economics-tract reading, Advertising. Because, thus far in part 3 of volume 1, advertising has zero place in Marxist economics. Will that change before the end? To be continued. But advertising does exist in Communist countries, for what that’s worth. Not that any Communist countries are really Marxist. Or so people tell me. Suppose I should finish the book before I believe that.
Ooo we got a dumpster diver outside the window. She is driving a $100k GMC Denali Yukon. But hey you do you.
I will miss sitting at this workbar in the window of the front room watching the world go by as I work and write. Reminds me of that Nick Cave song “As I Sat Sadly By Her Side:”
Then she drew the curtains down
And said, “When will you ever learn
That what happens there beyond the glass
Is simply none of your concern?
God has given you but one heart
You are not a home for the hearts of your
brothers
Jane is excited to head home, excited to find out who’s in her class. If past is present, she will have two or three people from her kindergarten class in her class, and two or three people from her first grade class in her class. Plus she knows a bunch of Girl Scouts, and some friends-of-friends, and girls from Gymnastics. Might be the first year she knows a bunch of people in her class. I kind-of remember this? Like mainly I remember that by second-ish grade it just felt like I knew everyone in class? And she never really had any problem before not knowing many people in her class. But it is kind of interesting. And I hope she gets a good teacher. That would be nice. A friend with a ton of kids who has passed through the school says all the second grade teachers are good, so that is promising.
We’ll find out tomorrow! Well, I will. You won’t until Thursday.
Justa mix today, mostly new. I was nine minutes short so I went and grabbed a couple oldies to fill it out, like you do. And I was going to mix them into the mix, like you do, but you know what? I think this mix works just fine, ending with Lloyd and Leonard.
Fare the fell, fine feathered friends.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.