Next, Part I

Much like early California spring, school has sprung. This means that I'm in classes from 12:00-10:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Wednesdays and Fridays being mostly recovery days from so much brain and leg work. I have thought about shoes more than I ever have before -- I tend to be a pacer when I am at work in front of a class, an incessant pacer, more like, and the first day I came home from a full day of pacing, my feet actually felt a bit numb. And these were Naturalizers, no less! Some of my paycheck this month will be spent on (gulp) the most sensible of shoes. Something that can sustain my pacing and commuting and general on-my-feetness for these next 14 weeks.

Amidst thinking about shoes, I've also been watching the series Angel, long after I finished Buffy and Firefly. There are reasons for this, the most important being that I never liked Angel. I thought he was boring. I tend to dislike gloomy brooding on screen for long stretches of time; this, perhaps, is why I can never seem to get through dramas like The English Patient. So much brooding compels me to check People.com to see what new, stupid, exciting thing Britney has recently done, to everyone's shock and horror. Maybe it's sensational of me, but because I feel like I spend so much time in my own mind, milling around, brooding about lessons or writing or how much writing I'm not lately getting done, when I'm outside of it, I like to be compelled.

But now I've arrived at the end of fourth-beginning of the fifth season and all the sudden, Angel is fascinating. At the end of the fourth season, the Angel Investigations team has been fighting against the nefarious metaphyscial law firm, Wolfram and Hart, who have been working on AI's destruction since season one. After a series of unfortunate events, Wolfram and Hart decides to GIVE the law firm to AI, with no provisos except that they use the facility however they want. For good, for evil -- Wolfram and Hart is fine with whatever. And through another series of unfortunate events, Angel makes an executive decision and takes this deal.

What is fascinating to me, and will be fascinating to watch, is where the dividing line between good and evil falls. In creating Angel, Whedon and Co. were trying to find a metaphor for life in your twenties and in this, they've found it. For me, my twenties have been a constant besiege of whether or not to abandon the artistic aspirations I started them with -- in other words, do I follow my dream of being a writer and continue to do so, even when I can barely pay my bills? Do I go to grad school for my MFA, a completely impractical degree, or do I pursue a degree that will allow me some security while marginally incorporating my love of writing into it?

I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to go with the unabandoned dreams of writing route. And I've been well-served by this. I've grown as a person, as a writer, as a thinker, and hopefully, in other, more undefinable ways. But there are moments, as my feet are paining me and my computer is being used not for creating stories, but for lesson plans and assignment handouts, that I start to wonder if I made the right choice.