So here's the bad thing about living in Philadelphia: I don't really have my shit together, and I don't have any friends in the city proper, and sometimes (like Sunday) I get derided by my mom and my brother for the way I live my life, like how I am inviting people to kick my ass. I'm bad at eye contact, girls tell my brother that I am so awkward, and my brother worries about me. I'm getting a cell phone tomorrow because brother made my mom an ultimatum that I can't live with him without one, because I create too much worry because I'm just so goddamn punchable.

So I guess soon I'll be easier to get in contact with.

I feel like a sellout.

Also family's paying for a haircut. I'm not really happy with my hair right now, my bangs are for shit, but expensive haircuts, even if I don't have to pay are just ideologically suspect.

And I don't know if I'm going to pursue this but a dude told me that I could maybe get a job at American Apparel, he gave me a name to ask for. That's probably too far away to be practical anyway but it's symptomatic of something larger and awful.

Further down this route of course would be actual photos on myspace and going to bars two or more times a week.

The sad truth is that Olympia is a place I can exist without awkwardness, where I can be harsh and honest and off-putting rather than in Philadelphia where I don't know what I'm doing. I can imagine myself just giving in completely to someone else's idea of coolness and still not being attractive to anyone.

My mom referred yesterday to Olympia not being the real world. She meant due to the lack of blacks. I came to the revelation in like junior year that the real world doesn't exist, we're all in our bubbles. City people like to think themselves oh so worldly but I'm sure that farmers think they're full of shit because of how detached they are from the food they eat, how their meat gets made. And the farmer are right but they are stupid and vote against their own interests and wear cowboy hats. And there are people who think they are in it because they are so debauched but the world of debauchery is a ridiculous one. What I'm saying is I can exist in Olympia, and Olympia kind of sucks and I create tension but it's cool.

I would like to live in Philadelphia but I don't want to sell my soul.

I bought comics today as some way to navigate the divide. As an exercise to hold them in my hand and still look people in the eye, to embrace that nerdy part of me that I trust and try to show some faith in it.

There is a part of me that knows that you can never be any more or less than what you actually are but I don't know what that actually means or how it can translate into not getting mugged.