It makes sense that I started to work at a school at the start of last fall, the first fall I would have continued on with my life without new class schedules and teachers, something I thought I wanted since high school when I waited for vacations and weekends like a man wandering in the desert looks for water or a drunk girl in Brooklyn looks for a cute dude with tattoos and cocaine. And I guess it makes sense that I left right at the start of summer. Working at that college was one more year of education, nothing more or less.

Leaving when I did allowed me to have one of the best summers--probably the best summer--I've ever had.

I rode my bike for work, looping around Brooklyn with sandwiches and smoothies for production assistants and retail associates, listening to Fugazi and sitting in the park in my down time reading books and drinking iced coffee.


I interned at Nerve over the summer, putting together some fun pieces and talking to some interesting people, producing work with such wit and integrity as Sex Advice from Bike Messengers. (Not that Nerve isn't great. It is. And not that it doesn't publish work of wit and integrity. It does. But with always being on call for the delivery company and the tattoo mag, I didn't have quite as much time and energy to devote to it as I would like.)

I've spent a lot of time talking about tattoos--traveling to Boston for their convention, speaking to artists from across the country about their work and their industry, having phone conversations with tattooed fine artists and lead singers from bands I've loved since I was 17. Every month, I talk about the industry's history with the legendary Bowery Stan.  

Work and life are good. I did a team race where we rode around New York with a boom box blasting dressed like apocalyptic hellions. We won.

I rode out to Fort Tilden beach every Sunday with huge groups of friends, swimming for hours, and eating strawberries and drinking 4Loko.

I rode from Philly to a lake somewhere far out in PA, went night swimming, and keg drinking. I was an extra for a movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and got paid too much to sit around with my friends in a church basement.

And if I get my check from the magazine tomorrow, I'll go to Atlanta for the weekend.
Either way, I go to California for a long bike ride and some exploring (SF to LA) on Monday.

And now it is really fall and maybe, once again, it's time to really think about what to do and why.