Instant Gratification: Fending Off a Bad Habit

[Insert rant about television and computers, visual culture, lack of concentration, less reading, less patience in young people blah blah blah - not to minimize it, but just to spare you]

Today I felt impatient.

I spent a good working day searching for a place to live for the next 11 months, and it's a very different beast than I had imagined.  I spent the first three hours scanning the webs, making phone calls, and sending e-mails before it even occurred to me to get out of the house where I'm temporarily planted.  Three hours to realize that my default expectation was that apartment shopping is a computer-based activity.

(side note: this is an example of what I mean when I talk about cultural narratives - some combination of factors in our culture influenced my life to create a certain set of expectations.  The story in my head was something like: e-mail a renter, see the place, love the place, move in by Wednesday.  A benign example, but illustrative of how stories matter, and operate in complicated ways!)

Disappointed at my naivete and that I had so generously fed the i-gratification habit, I took to the streets.  I parked my car in the depths of the Bywater and spent the next two hours walking up and down, block after block, calling real-estate postings as I passed.  I felt a tinge of frustration and self-doubt, followed by another wave of self-disappointment.  Less than 24 hours in my new city and already a slip in my resolve.  Ridiculous.  He-who-laments-the-thing-becomes-the-thing.  I actually had to pause to remind myself that finding a place to live actually takes time and persistence.

And then an internal wake-up call - how removed my life is from experiences of sustained hardship: long-term unemployment, involuntary homelessness, hunger, illness, crippling debt, and many things far less serious.

As I sat with my iced latte in a chic cafe with free wifi, exhausted after two hours walking in the Louisiana sun, I took a moment to be grateful.  Grateful that I have a job, that I will probably have a place to live by September 1st, that I was able to pack my bags and move somewhere new and exciting, that I will probably find some good people in this town, that I've lived so well that one day of apartment hunting actually felt a little hard.

Goal for day two: develop a thicker skin.