Post-Grad Drudgery

Man, the past two years have been tough. Being graduated from college has been the hardest transition of my life without question. This is in large part because nobody ever tells you what to expect after college. So I present to you my lessons for post-grad life:

1. Your friends will change. For those four years of college, I had the best friends a guy could ask for. We did everything together. I lived with my best friends, partied with my best friends, sat out hangovers with my best friends, and everything else in between. It's essentially like having a family when you live with your friends. In short, it was awesome.

Now, I see those people that I literally once would call my family only a couple of times a year. Once we graduated, everyone moved away. My friends reside all over the country from New York to Washington D.C. to Seattle. It's pretty tough going from seeing those people every waking minute to basically never seeing them.

Quite honestly, it's pretty lonely without them. When I come home from class, there's no one to joke around with or just watch a TV show with before bed. There's no one to go grocery shopping with. It's just not the same.

2. Hangovers get worse. During my freshman year of college, my hallmates (2nd Elliot at Mary Markley Hall - probably the drunkest hall in the history of dorms) and I drank pretty much Tuesday through Saturday, causing all sorts of ruckuses and having all sorts of fun. I could drink 12 beers on any given night and wake up and make it to an 8:30 class no problem. Those days are long gone. Nowadays if I go to the bar and drink 12 beers I have to fully plan on zero productivity the next day and I have to purchase at least 2 32 ounce Gatorades for the morning.

I also think the worse hangovers are a symptom of the first bullet-point on this list, friends. When I lived at BOX the Sunday hangover was a ritual. Everyone would stumble out of bed and meet in the BOX living room, where we would plop ourselves onto our beer-stained couches for about 12 hours of television and joke-telling that would make the hangover feel a little bit better. Those were some of the best times I ever had, and it was while I felt like absolute trash.

I don't have those friends around to sit around and joke with every Sunday anymore. Now it's pretty much just me and my hungover self sitting around feeling miserable. When your by yourself during a hangover, the depressing feeling induced by the hangover is increased tenfold.

3. It's much harder to meet girls. I in no way mean this to be disrespectful to girls, but in college girls just have very little inhibitions. Girls get drunk and make horrible decisions in college, making it much easier for guys at the bars.

In the post-grad world, (most) girls tire of the getting-hammered-at-the-bar-and-sloppily-making-out with guys scene. Instead, post-college girls want you to take them on dates and actually put in some effort and maybe even iron your shirt for a date.

Moving back home certainly doesn't help anything. The bars that I frequent in my hometown largely feature middle-aged married couples drinking wine who probably already had 401k's when I was born. Even when I do meet girls my age around my hometown, we most likely have nothing in common because those girls have never left home and are probably in community college. Don't get me wrong, there are girls to be met and the process is fun, but it's just not as easy as it once was.

4. You don't automatically feel like an adult after graduation. This has been the toughest lesson that I've learned. I guess I always thought that once I graduated college I would just feel like a dad or something and be completely settled down. That's just not the case. I've had too much to drink on plenty of occasions, made some dumb mistakes, and generally acted like an 18 year old my fair share of times in post-grad life. That's because, quite frankly, I'm not that much different from my 21 year old college self. Growing up simply doesn't happen overnight.

Being single in your mid-twenties can be a weird situation. You want to be settled down and maybe just have a lemonade and watch a movie on some Friday nights, but the ultimate goal is to have someone to be able to stay in with you on those nights, so you feel compelled to go out and meet new people. I guess when I was a little kid I always pictured myself being married and doing yard work and paying bills and being really content at age 24, but life doesn't always agree with the grand plans you've made for yourself.

This Train is Shipping Jobs Out of Cleveland

For a day, college lived again as me and the old college buddies converged upon the city of Cleveland for the (supposed) purpose of watching the Michigan-Ohio State outdoor hockey game at Progressive Field.

Things that happened in Cleveland, in no particular order:

- Dan lost a front tooth. Okay, it is only chipped, but if you can picture Lloyd Christmas in your head, you know that it is just plain bad.

- Zola payed a homeless person $7 to walk him back to our hotel.

- Bartender at the hotel bar refused to serve Paul. Paul stormed off with the exclamation, "Thanks for the service!"

- Dan placed half of his said chipped tooth on the bar and offered it as a form of payment.

- Dan was asked to leave the hotel bar.

- Ross was not seen in over 2 hours, and apparently he was busy walking back to the hotel in a stupod over 5 miles home from the suburbs of Cleveland.

- A complaint was filed at the hotel that "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was playing too loudly from our room.

- Over $200 was spent on Jager bombs.

Despite all of these occurrences, perhaps nothing was more despicable than the voicemails that my friends left from my phone.

More Than a Game: Volume II

After a night at the old hometown bar with our childhood friends - all returned to the neighborhood for the holidays from the various places throughout Michigan that they now reside - my buddy Steve and I got up to our usual hijinks and started letting our inner child speak for our brain. Before long, we were on the open road in yet another misguided attempt to recapture the excitement of childhood. We were on our way to Chicago, the place I called home not so long ago.

Returning to Chicago was bittersweet. Going to the Hawks game brought back so many great memories of watching a lot of amazing sports events there and made me miss how great a sports city the Windy City truly is. Returning to my favorite bar just across the street from my old apartment complex brought back a lot of good memories of watching Wings games late into the night last spring. And seeing the bars on every corner of the maize of streets throughout the city brought back memories of nights of limitless opportunities. And, of course, a late-night drunken excursion to the favorite Chinese food place tasted so good.

But it brought back a lot of unpleasant memories, as well. Of lonely nights spent sipping beers by myself while listening to Red Wings broadcasts, feeling homesick for my hometown, homesick for nights with my friends watching Wings games at home, of sitting around my old living room with my dad while a fire crackled in the fireplace and we listened to Mickey Redmond exuberantly announce a goal for the good guys. I thought a lot about those nights in the days that followed that ill-minded yet fun road trip.

For me, listening to those Red Wings broadcasts through my laptop was one of my only connections to my home. Ken Kal, the Red Wings radio broadcaster, was a good friend to me during those Chicago nights. I've never met the man, but he f

elt like family. He brought me back to all those nights in Ann Arbor watching with my college buddies. Back to evenings with my childhood best friends, including Steve, cheering on our beloved Wings. Back to nights when I was young when I would sneak into my garage just to hang out with my dad while he listened on his old radio box to the Red Wings on winter evenings.

In that way, listening to Ken Kal narrate those Red Wings games to me on those lonesome Chicago nights was about far more than sports. It took me back home, albeit virtually, when I needed it most - even if it was only for a couple of hours.

Thanks for everything, Ken Kal

Looking back on my time in America's Second City, it is easy to label that year as a big mistake in my life. But it did maybe the most important thing in my life: it made me realize that I was simply meant to be in Michigan. I think about all of my college friends making lives for themselves in cities with grandiose opportunities throughout the country from Washington D.C. to Cleveland to Seattle, and I realize I'm content with where I am: home in Michigan. Those days in Chicago revealed to me that I am much more a country man than a city-dweller, far more a small-town boy at heart than a aspiring city yuppie.

The other day I was driving aimlessly down the winding, forested trails in Hines Park, and I heard the song "Where I Come From," by Montgomery Gentry:

"Don't you dare go runnin' down my little town where I grew up, And I won't cuss your city lights,

If you ain't ever took a ride through the heart of my town, anything you would say would be a lie".

It echoed much of the sentiment I've felt over the past two years. There's absolutely nothing spectacular about the place I grew up. It's small, a little past it's prime, and void of much in the way of lofty opportunities. But I love it that way. Over the past couple weeks, I've had the pleasure of hanging out at the hole-in-the-wall bars in my town, watching Red Wings games with the guys I grew up with.

As Steve and I drove home from that spur-of-the-moment roadtrip to Chicago, I felt some closure with Chicago. Driving eastward down I-94, the skyscrapers of Chicago growing smaller behind us with each passing mile-marker, I knew this time I wasn't going back. I don't need to listen through my laptop for Ken Cal to take me back home anymore; I'm living in those memories now.

May the Wind Always Be at Your Back

It's been a tough year for me. A family friend that I really looked up to, and who was genuinely just a good person, died way too young early on in January of this year. I lived in Chicago a hundred miles from anyone I had ever cared about, feeling depressed and alone for a good while, all the while feeling like I had made a really bad decision in going to school there. The girl I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with broke up with me over the summer, after which I had by far the hardest couple months of my life. I live in an apartment that I was supposed to share with that girl, which is a daily reminder of lost promises and disappearing dreams. So for the past couple weeks or so, I've been counting down the days until New Years Eve. I wanted to be done with 2011 forever. Quite frankly I'd erase the entire thing from my life if I could. It felt as if the wind was most certainly not at my back.

Until Yesterday. Yesterday Michigan beat Ohio State in a football game. Call it a game, if you want. But to me it was far more than a game. It was a reason to remember 2011. It was the only reason to remember 2011.

On Friday I read something on Mgoblog.com that meant a lot to me. I think it really puts in perspective what yesterday's win means for me. I'll try and paraphrase:

The year was 1995. The guy who posted this story was a recent college graduate, not unlike myself, who was living a long way from home in an unfamiliar city, far away from family and friends. He was feeling kind of down, and feeling kind of worried about "those types of things that you worry about when you are a younger man". The kind of worry that isn't really too serious, but you only realize that years later.

As the 1995 Ohio State-Michigan game approached, the #2 Buckeyes were undefeated and heavily favored in the big game. He watched the game, alone, in his apartment. He watched a Michigan running back by the awesome name of Tshimanga Biakabatuka that day. And he yelled "Biakabatuka" at the top of his lungs numerous times throughout that day, as Biakabatuka ran wild for 313(!) yards, perhaps the greatest one-man performance in the history of The Rivalry.

And I'll quote the part that really meant a lot to me: "It's ridiculous, but the way I felt after that beautiful destruction changed a good bit of my outlook. Everything would have turned out fine anwyay, because I would have worked hard to make it all work out. But Tshimanga put the wind at my back".

It's strange, but after yesterday I do feel as if maybe the wind has changed directions a bit. It doesn't feel as if it's blowing directly in my face, and maybe even the wind is at my back now. I'm ready for that. I'm ready to start anew. And maybe, just maybe, a "game" - as some people who don't understand what sports can truly mean sometimes would call it - will provide me that wind at my back. Don't tell me it's just a game.

May the wind always be at your back and the sun upon your face,

And may the wings of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.

Here's to the wind at your back.

Growing Up with The Game

Unbeknownst to the average fan, the spectacle that is Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor is not the only Michigan Stadium in the state of Michigan.

In fact, there are undoubtedly many Michigan Stadiums sprinkled throughout the mitten in small towns from Mackinaw to Toledo. The one I know exists in my hometown, a short walk down the street I grew up on, through a patch of woods, and in the middle of a vast grassy field speckled with baseball diamonds. The chalk on the football field reads "Lutheran High School Westland," but not in my mind. To me, that high school football field will always exist as the Big House.

When we were young my little brother and I used to toss our peewee-sized blue and yellow Michigan football around our front yard on brisk, grey fall days after school, waiting for our dad to turn the corner on his way home from work. In the days before the early Michigan winter set in, there was just enough daylight left for some quick outdoor playtime with our dad after the end of the 5 o'clock work day. We waited anxiously for him to get home so he could take us down to Lutheran High School's football field, where he would toss the football around to us. To an outsider, it might not seem any different than tossing the football around our own front yard, but to us, playing at that football field was different in so many ways.

When I was on that field, I wasn't catching passes from my dad; I was Mercury Hayes, wearing the #9 Michigan jersey, catching a pass from Scott Dreisbach or Brian Griese. When I chased my brother down those chalked sidelines, I wasn't tackling my brother; I was Ian Gold, tackling some bully-faced Ohio State Buckeye player. When I stopped to catch my breath, sometimes as it formed a tiny smoke cloud from the frigid air, I didn't see some meager metal bleachers on the sidelines; I saw the endless rows of the Big House, with a hundred thousand fans cheering for me under a cold November sky in Ann Arbor. To my brother and I, at least, that small high school football field was Michigan Stadium. And in all those dozens and dozens of games we played there, we never once played anyone except Ohio State -- and of course we never lost.

I don't think this is a unique experience to my brother, my dad, and I. I'd be willing to bet that thousands of fathers and sons from Westland, Michigan to Grand Rapids, Michigan bonded over playing against Ohio State together, whether it be in a backyard, a high school football field, a farmland field, or a park. In the same way, I bet thousands of fathers and sons in Ohio bonded by playing against imaginary Michigan players in imaginary Horseshoe's on autumnal Ohio evenings.

It always seemed like those evenings spent out on that field were all in preparation for some big event, the event of the fall: the Michigan - Ohio State game. It was almost as if we felt that our play out on Lutheran Field was practice for the big game, that diving for all those passes from Dad would somehow boost Michigan's chances of beating Ohio State that year. That if I dropped one of those passes, I was letting down the Wolverines. And that even if I forgot to wear my Michigan windbreaker out to the field, I wasn't fulfilling my civic duty as a young Michigan fan.

In a way, the fall season actually did culminate with the game. Always occurring on a late November Saturday, family and friends always gathered around the television set for a gathering that rivaled Thanksgiving. The fridge was stocked full of ice cold beers and enough soda to keep me up all night, the smell of chili sifted through the kitchen as it cooked on the stovetop, a log crackled in the fireplace, and maize and blue attired faces sat on the living room sofas in an eerily quiet anticipation of the game.

In this way, Michigan - Ohio State is far more than a football game. It is its own culture. It's fathers and sons. It's a way of identifying yourself. It's family gatherings. For families in Ohio and Michigan, The Game is a holiday around which the year revolves. As I'm sure it did for kids in Ohio, it felt like part of my genetics; it was just how I was supposed to grow up. I dream of one day being Denard Robinson throwing passes to my own son in our backyard, buying him his first Michigan jersey, and taking him to his first game. I dream of one day being able to tell stories about my days at Michigan to my grandkids.

Over the past few years, I've subconsciously tried to downplay the significance of the meaning of the rivalry, pretty unsuccessfully. Each loss has brought back images of those autumn evenings at Lutheran Field -- our Michigan Stadium -- scoring touchdowns with my brother. Each loss has brought back the images of those family gatherings, making those losses sting even worse. It's no use downplaying the significance of those games. The Game, to me, will always be more than a game. This Saturday, come four o'clock or so, I know I'll be shedding a tear or two remembering those times with my dad and my brother at our own Michigan Stadium -- I just can only hope this year those tears are tears of joy, and that I'm singing "The Victors" at the top of my lungs.

Go Blue.

The Goin' Nowhere Blues

"In the corner of the barroom/

Lives the ghost of Langston Hughes/

He's takin' notes and smokin' cigarettes/

Sippin slowly on his booze/

Got them goin' nowhere blues"

- Robert Earl Keen: Got the Goin' Nowhere Blues

This morning, I woke up, slightly hungover from one of those wish-I-was-still-in-college Wednesday nights at the old undergraduate bars, to a text from an old college friend. Essentially, the text said something along the lines of: 'been reading your blog, and feel the same way. My life is in need of a major change.' He said he skipped work today because he just couldn't do it. We texted back and forth for a little while, lamenting about the ruts we were in. I expressed how I missed college, when all of us (college buddies) were all together in one place -- not dispersed all over the country in D.C., N.Y.C., Cleveland, Chicago, and wherever else; I expressed how I missed college days when everything just seemed to make so much more sense.

Not long thereafter, I sat looking out my apartment window as snowflakes started to fall. It hit me that winter was here, and here for the long haul once again. The first snow conjured up images in my mind of months spent hibernating indoors and drowning beer after beer on uneventful weekend nights, of nights locked up inside warm pubs, of the slow monotony of yet another winter -- stuck in a prison of routine.

Maybe it was in part due to the alcohol wearing off, but the whole morning seemed to be overwrought with an oppressive weight, the weight of paralysis.

There used to be an old dirt road in my hometown, unpaved and hidden from suburbia underneath a shield of pine trees. I used to go there nights during the autumn of my senior year -- sometimes I just didn't want to go home. I was tired of my hometown, tired of being trapped in the strictures of high school life, tired of the same old same old. I remember thinking I might bust at the seams if something big didn't happen, soon.

I never thought I would feel that way again. But that text I received from my college buddy still is sitting with me hours later: "I'm ready for a change, in a major way".

Ironically, as I type this, I'm sipping the same beer I always drink, getting ready to go to the same bar me and buddy always go to. Might be a long winter.

The Paul Kemp Blues

Late last night I returned to my dark, lonely apartment in the eerily silent midnight hour after a viewing of The Rum Diary. With the cinema-induced images of miniature rum shooters fresh in my mind, I felt a lot like Paul Kemp -- the main character of the film/novel, and a portrait of a young Hunter S. Thompson -- did in the lonesome and crazy world of Puerto Rico.

Like Kemp, I felt stuck in that strange quarter-life stage between the carefree bliss of youth and the contentedness of settling down, the stage in which one struggles to define just what one is doing with his life. Like Kemp, I felt at odds with the career track I had chosen for myself and was left to wonder just how I had arrived at this career juncture. Like Kemp, I felt torn between an ambition to do something that I can't quite put my finger on yet and a lack of ambition in which I am content to half-ass my way through life in a haze of self-indulgent adventure. Like Kemp, I simply wanted a shot of rum -- if for nothing else than to make sense of all those thoughts.

But I was out of rum. Instead, unable to sleep, I picked up my copy of The Rum Diary and re-read the last couple of pages of the novel as I waited for the NyQuil to kick in. The last paragraph of the novel:

"Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street. Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night."

Thompson's closing lines are simultaneously both nostalgic and foreword-looking. There is a sense of sadness as Kemp looks back on his time on the island. Despite the ups and (mostly) downs he encountered, Kemp seems nostalgic as he realizes how much the island has influenced him and how it will unavoidably play a significant role in wherever he goes next. Nothing can ever change his time there; it will forever be cemented into the footpath of his life.

In the past several weeks and months I've been thinking a lot about the different stones on my own life footpath thus far as well. As an avid walker, I walk a lot in directions of places that occupy a special spot in my past. Over the summer, probably because it was the only thing I could tolerate soberly without hating life, I must have walked every square foot of my hometown. I walked past the Mike Modano Ice Arena, the place where Steve and I learned to skate as little kids. I walked past the post-demolition rubble that remains from the movie theater I used to go to. I walked down the trails alongside the Rouge River for just about as far as my legs would take me. And of course I walked to the old sandlot.

In Ann Arbor I've done a lot of walking by the places I called home during college, namely Mary Markley dormitory hall and the old house on State Street infamously known as the BOX house. So much of my life took shape in that tiny room on the 2nd floor of Mary Markley hall. I met so many people that year: some were fleeting drunken encounters with people now dispersed throughout America; some were historical moments with the people that will be my best friends for the rest of my life. It's weird to look up at my old window, where so many good times and a few bad occurred, and see that some unnamed freshman has the gall to occupy that room. In fact I can't even get in the front door of the building.

The same is true with the old college house. The rooms are now occupied by people not my best friends. It seems wrong in a sense. Those were our bedrooms, that was our front porch, that was our kitchen countertop bar. That was our house -- where relationships bloomed and relationships ended, where we got bad news on a phone call from home, where we rejoiced together over a sporting event, where we laughed and where we cried. So much of my life is ingrained in that house that it feels blasphemous that anyone else should live there, in the seat of our memories.

As Paul Kemp does as he departs Puerto Rico, I look back with nostalgia at those places. And like he did, I recognize that each place you go forms the sort of backbone of your life; each one will be a part of you no matter where you end up.

As Kemp laments in the film, "Life is full of exits". He exits Puerto Rico knowing exactly where he's been, but having no idea where the next stone in the footpath will lead him. And so I, in these times of uncertainty, may have no idea which direction my life might lead me in the coming years. But anytime I want I can take a stroll by Mary Markley dormitory Hall or by the old BOX House and know exactly where I've been.

Indeed, perhaps it's better to know where you've been rather than exactly where you are going. It seemed to work out pretty well for Hunter S. Thompson, after all.