late night...somewhere in boston

its one of those nights that i was all prepared to go to bed early, and really didnt have anything to do, and was decently tired at around 11. and i don't know why but i'm a bit awake now...kind of not sleepy anymore. maybe it was because i was hungry, so i went to grab a snack in the kitchen. apparently the microwave and the toaster are a bit loud at 1:30 am. maybe it was because i was thinking about moving back to boston, and the excitement of the apartment hunt woke me up. and thinking about work next year, and all the possibilities. sometimes it's hard to sleep when you have too many things on your mind, and not enough in your stomach.

housing will be quite an adventure. i will be looking for a single bedroom apartment. but those don't come cheap, and it'll be hard to have to save quarters for laundry again, and not have a huge kitchen and living room. and it'll be hardest to have to pay for utilities in a city where temperatures range from 20 F to 95 F throughout the year. san diego has its stability, but the price is monotony. i know that i will enjoy the spring that much more when it's only a month long.

and in three days i'll be turning 24. actually i haven't thought about this at all. i entered my age as 23 earlier today when doing a survey, an i remembered a time when i didn't realize i hadn't yet turned 23, and completely missed what it was like to be 22. not that it matters anymore after you turn 21. that's probably why i'll be 21 forever. yeah, really, 24 doesn't really manifest in my mind. is it denial? is this why, when you get older, a birthday doesn't seem to have as much of an impact as when you are 6, turning 7, turning 7 1/2, turning 10? each half birthday means twice as much as now. and even on the big 3-0 and 4-0s, they're not quite as much joy and balloons and cake, as midlife crises and questions of where have the years gone.

the celebration should be grandiose, though. this weekend is perfect. a friend's wedding, another's housewarming party, a 3 day weekend. and a birthay snuck in there somewhere, which is perfectly convenient. i should have just extended my vacation to tuesday. after all, i have plenty of time left, and not much time to use it.

i think the next iteration of my blog will see it being renamed something cheesy, like there and back again, after jrr tolkien. i mean, it really was like that - i travelled there, and now i'm back. who knew that a year ago, when i was leaving for the airport on the T for the last time, all the romantic memories of my favorite city that i was locking into my heart, would be reawakened to a reality just about a year later? does that make them any less romantic?

i'll be returning to a cambridge of my adulthood, not the boston of my tumultuous college years. different. no more microcosm of MIT undergraduate life, where anything is possible, and everyone is young forever. where boston is a large playground for the underaged and fake-id endowed. where there is work and then there is play, and both take up more time than you have in a day, but you can't afford to miss a minute of either. where people don't go to bed before midnight. or 2 am. where my night would be just beginning right now, in a suite full of people wide awake, in pajamas, cooking up greasy midnight meals while clutching books and bibles full of notes.

and my fraternity house will be just minutes away, but years away too, with some annoying pledge of the class of 2011 sleeping in my lofts, watching tv in my lounge, drinking beer in my party room. i can always walk by my front door again, open it with all the pride i had, but now entering someone else's house. and kenmore square will no longer be mine, but only another T stop for my trip to nowhere.

and my school will be there, but if i walk through the infinite corridor i will see all the newest, greatest minds that are being bred and molded, like i was but probably better. as i walk through, i'd wonder if i contributed to the history of this place, if my name would ever be put onto a tile on the hack wall, or be discussed to legendary proportions in someone's lab or classroom. and if i'm lucky i'll be partially affiliated with MIT again, with either Lincoln Labs or the Broad. and that's of some comfort, even if it's not jumping in a time machine and going back four, five, six years, back to the moment i received my acceptance letter.

maybe i was meant to be a lifer, though i always made fun of conor, john ho, and even nathan when he thought about the ph.D program. i used to dislike kendall square so much, because it was too close to MIT and life, and always dreamed of traveling to far lands, to california. but when i think i might end up living there, it's comforting, to know that i would need nothing more than a bike to travel to all that is my world. (ok, so maybe broad would be too close. i'd have to try living a bit farther. lincoln would give me the distance necessary.) but living in cambrige and working for some other company (like google) would not be the same. some part of me wants that email address, bbren@mit.edu, back again and active so that all who email me will know, and everyone who drives behind me will wonder, "who's tim?"

but still it's the same boston skyline, the same chilly winters and throbbing summers, the same bike paths down dirty cambridge streets. i'm afraid to live it again, because i don't want it to be different from what i remembered. but i'm afraid to miss any more than i have, because then it would have gone and changed without me.