Wear sunscreen….

I sit in my room quite a bit. being jobless, my job turns into hunting for a job. A job that I don’t work too hard at, I must confess… but I am becoming more persistent in the mass emailing of resumes to the infinite number of black hole email addresses found on yahoo.hotjobs, monster.com, craigslist.org, and other such “employment” websites.

On a certain occasion, my roommate approached my room and asked me if I had heard a song that she had just listened to in her car on the radio. “The title was something about sunscreen, and it was some guy talking” she described to me. Oh yes! The baz luhrman speech turned into a song! Of course I had this file… and quickly copied it to her.

That sent me hyperspeed into one of those cheesy sitcom daydream flashback moments where all the actors are the same age yet we’re flashing back 4 years or so. I listened to the song and heard the words that I recall hearing last time I had played this track. There were some cute lines I had forgotten, and some memorable lines that I had remembered. One line of the cheesy speech-turned-song struck me with 10,000 volts the moment I heard it. The line was brand new, as if baz had just added it and this was the debut of the newly added line, for my ears only.

“don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind, the race is long and in the end it’s only with yourself.”

Years ago, these two sentences didn’t mean anything to me. I had no need to feel jealousy at this point in my life. With an optimistic college student outlook, my internal audio filter cut this line out of my auditory frequency and erased it from my memory.

Today I’m full of jealousy.


I’m so full of jealousy that I’ve turned my new favorite album choice to “so jealous” by tegan and sara. The latter statement may seem a bit too extreme. I do really enjoy the music of the Canadian twin lesbian sisters, and their latest album “so jealous” just so happens to fall in with my current mood.

My ex girlfriend emailed me today asking for my address, she wants to send me pics of her and “her loves”. After 5 years of dating and about that many years of living together, she is getting married. Am I jealous of him marrying her? No. am I jealous of not having someone to call “loves”? no. then what is my issue here??? I’m jealous at how excited and happy her email to me was. The words in her email were emitting the same glow that she would have been, as she composed the email.

There are people I associate with who have been on the planet for a year or two less than me that have accomplished more. They have newer cars, better clothes, more friends, a secure place in their “world”… I witness first hand people who sit comfortably in every aspect of life, having attained so many of my unachieved goals with what seems to be ease.

Hearing this line, from this song, gave me that parental hand on the shoulder accompanied by the ever-so-comforting “you’re doing better than you think, be patient, it’ll all work out. You just have to wait and see.” Had a person told me these ideas I would have warded them off with my common sense warding shield and continued being a jealous underachiever. Something about a recording with bad music behind it, coupled with a boatload of fun/entertaining/useful wisdom can put things into perspective.

I’m behind now. I’ve been up before. I’ll be up again. Then I’ll be down again. But the race is long. And it is really only me that sees this “race”. I’m the only one that deals with this jealousy. Simple idea.




i bet you're jealous that i posted this entry via wireless internet compliments of the JavaCat cafe in san francisco with the help of an apple ibook. that's a little fyi for your in-for-may-shun!