Ruminations

Where have I been living the past twelve years?!

I was out to dinner on Monday night with my friend, Josh. We were discussing how for the first time in our lives, people seem to be moving in different directions...and at very different speeds. In college we were living variations of the same life. Go to class, write a paper, get drunk, eat ramen noodles. (Maybe in that order, maybe not). Then after graduation, we moved on--moved onto the "real world." Again, all living in similar looking apartments on the East side of Manhattan. Now would be a great time to make a joke about living in Murray Hill, but I won't. We worked during the week and lived like college kids on the weekends. But now, at twenty-five, some of us are paving our own paths. Some are living with boyfriends and girlfriends, some are getting engaged--and then there are those of us who are still waking up in our own vomit (or urine), in a stranger's bed.

It was at this point in the conversation when Josh asked me if I had ever read Aaron Karo's Ruminations. I said that I hadn't. Once I climbed out from beneath the large boulder that I've been living under for the past twelve years, I discovered an amazing world of hilarity. Aaron Karo's ruminations is a column that he's been writing for the past twelve years that has successfully documented his life from his third week of college in 1997 through being a 20something in NYC. Reading his column has been life changing. He writes the way we think about relationships, sex, and meeting girls/guys living in New York. His column really inspired me. And so, I did what I do best. I wrote Aaron Karo an e-mail. In the e-mail, I may have confessed my new found love for him, as well as asking him to marry me. (Yeah, I wish that I was kidding too). But, the best part was--he wrote back! While he did not accept my marriage proposal, he did tell me that he would be doing stand up in NYC this fall. Aaron Karo inspired me to ruminate, and to keep on writing, because well...what started off as an e-mail to his high school friends from Long Island spun him into a career as a columnist, author and stand-up comic. So yes, this is a big shout out to him--but his writing makes me laugh out loud, because as he says it best--he's been writing what you're thinking... since 1997.