Lazy Week, aka I Bought a New Car and Watched FLCL and Felt Old
By Ford_Dent 10 Comments
Also I didn't really play any games that got me in the mood to write about them, although I did go back to Sunset Overdrive for a while there and it was nice. I wrote this and posted it somewhere else last night, and now I'm blatantly using it as my weekly blog here so I can get back to the important business of watching more GB videos while my laundry dries.
Last night, I agreed to lease a new car and see off the battered old 2000 Honda Accord SE (green) that had been my companion through three states and, if I’m remembering properly, at least four different jobs. I replaced it with a 2015 Nissan Leaf S (white), because after extensive research it became apparent that I fall into the (regrettably) small number of drivers for whom the limited range of the Leaf doesn’t matter—I never bothered to make many friends out here in Illinois, and the few I have aren’t far away (and my naturally reclusive nature means I don’t really drive out to their places of residence that often anyway—once or twice a month, tops), so who cares about range? I was already in the habit of renting a car for longer road trips anyway (the Honda had, at time of sale to the dealer, 203,340 miles on it, and adding large chunks of mileage on for trips home seemed like a bad idea).
I did my research, and talked over leasing vs. owning with friends and family, and yesterday walked into a dealership thinking I would have to haggle more than I did to get the deal I wanted. It was all budgeted out meticulously, and I made sure that I could still have money to set aside every month for savings, because there’s always shit you don’t plan for and it’s good to have money to fall back on. I learned while doing my research and planning that I have an excellent credit rating—a far cry from back in 2011 when I had to pay a ridiculous amount of money as a security deposit on a shitty apartment in New York because my score was in the toilet. At some point in the last four years, I became responsible enough to merit higher credit limits on my cards and about 250 additional points to my credit score. That helped get the deal I wanted in one day, so last night I drove home in a different car than I left the house in.
Replacing the Honda was a responsible move—the winter was hard on the engine, and it was burning oil, plus the A/C was perpetually on the fritz, and the engine’s efficiency was dropping so I was filling the tank more than I used to. It was best to shop for a car now, when I could walk away, than to wait until the car stopped working. I did a whole lot of thinking and researching and planning on the topic, because that is what you should do when you sign a piece of paper saying you will pay x amount of money to a man every month in return for having a car (and when that money is all you have to pay for the car, because you do not need to buy gas and can charge for free down the road, it’s a bit easier to swallow). I have now made a commitment to keep up on these payments until I don’t have to anymore, at which point I will probably pay them again for a new model.
I had to tell them my birthday and age. I will be 30 in July. I have very few memories of being in my 20s, and still feel like I only just got back from college—but even my Master’s degree is five years old now. I’ve held down a job writing marketing material now for two years and two weeks, which is the longest I’ve ever held down a job as long as I’ve been alive.
Today, I let my insurance agent know I’d bought a new car and submitted a request to have my insurance transferred over. I registered my car on the little transponder I bought that pays tolls for me so I don’t have to go through tollbooths. I went shopping for a blue dress shirt, because I have to work a trade show in a few weeks and it requires a blue dress shirt. I was very boring and adult. I sat down and decided I would play some games, because I had been responsible and earned the right, but Xbox Live was down (again), so instead I finished re-watching FLCL.
A lot of people will tell you the best song from FLCL is not Last Dinosaur. They are fucking liars.
If you happen to follow me on twitter, you might’ve seen me talking about this a few weeks ago—I picked up the blu ray of the series on a whim and decided I would see if it held up. When I was in my second year at college, a staggering ten years ago, I saw the show for the first time, and because everyone in college is either attempting to become an adult or mourning the end of being a kid (or maybe just wishing they could shake themselves off what felt like a pre-ordained path), I loved it. It had the sort of profound effect on me that art can have on the overly dramatic (so essentially anyone in their early 20s), and I distinctly remember getting up and leaving the common room when we finished the series to walk around campus at night smoking a cigarette and thinking what I’m sure were very profound thoughts about who I was and who I wanted to be and where I was going and whether I should ask the girl I liked out on a date (she declined, because bless her heart, she could probably tell I was a fucking mess).
The show didn’t feel as profound this time around—I am not who I was, obviously—but the moment where Haruko offers the chance to drop everything and strike out on their own still managed to fill me with a deep longing to do the same. I’m a Responsible Adult now, of course, and disappearing with no notice would carry severe repercussions (and inconvenience people at my job who I would prefer not to inconvenience, because I feel obligation), but there remains a part of me that wants desperately to set everything I’ve built for myself here on fire and run far, far away to… I don’t know what. Drink myself stupid somewhere I’ve never been, I suppose. To immediately prove to myself that I’ve not settled down, because I never wanted to settle down, I wanted to be a rockstar writer living out of my shitty broken down Honda writing the sort of shit that would have a profound effect on people, or just drifting from town to town, wandering the wilds on foot. Or leaving the country and going back to England to do who knows what. You know, the sorts of things you tell yourself you’re going to do in high school but only like 2% of people ever do, because the rest of us have to make the world actually run?
I’m feeling restless, is all—I know that, and I know that in less than a month I’ll be on a plane to England for a business trip (so important! such an adult thing to do, to travel to a country and tell the man at passport you are there for Business) that I’ve extended into a vacation back to my old stomping grounds in England, where I can see all the friends I’ve not seen in five years, and this will be enough, I think, to scratch the itch.
This all makes it sound like I’m secretly miserable, but that’s not the case (or maybe I’m just trying to convince myself that’s not the case?), not really. Adulthood is not an awful thing, and while certainly a younger me might express some shock that I would ever consider something likeleasing a car or living out in the middle of nowhere, working a regular-ass job (ah, but I am paid to write, I must remind myself now and again, and there are very few people who can make the same claim. There was a time where I was resigned to working in human resources, andthat me would’ve done anything to have a job that paid him to write, up to and including breaking a lease and saying goodbye to everyone he knew to move to the middle of nowhere, Illinois), younger me was kind of a fucking idiot anyway. I have writing, and I have my stupid, stupid podcasts, and I still spend most of my free time playing games, and that is pretty fucking good as far as life goes. That someone thought me responsible enough to allow me to obtain a brand new robot car is icing on the cake.
I think I still like the end of FLCL. I like the whole thing (all six episodes). It doesn’t hit with the same force it used to, but there are parts that still resonate with me, and make me remember being younger and dumber, and I smile.
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