Ambition

Evil

It's 7:15 in the morning and I'm already at JFK terminal 8 for my 9:15 flight. I can't stand being late. I can't stand even the thought of being late. It's pleasantly quiet in JFK -- I didn't know what to expect being that it's Thanksgiving week, but maybe people aren't traveling until tomorrow? I walk past a food stand and want to get a glass of the fresh-squeezed orange juice they have sitting on ice. But the juice goes for something like $4.50, so I pass. Every time I walk past that food stand in terminal 8, I always want to get a juice, but I always pass. One time, I was traveling from San Francisco to New York with my friend The AY and as we were nearing the food stand, she goes, "OH! The orange juice! I LOVE the fresh-squeezed orange juice at this stand. I'm gonna get one." Then she asks, "You want one?" I answer, "Nah."

Right next to the food stand is this shop called Alti-tunes. They rent you music and DVDs that you can take on the plane. I never noticed it until this morning. But then again, I rarely notice anything at JFK -- it's usually so hectic and I'm usually in such a blur as I trudge from curb to gate, from gate to curb. But today, the thing about Alti-tunes that caught my eye was one of their video screens. The audio was on mute, but the image was unmistakable: a young Bob Dylan, in grainy, harshly-lit black and white video. This must have been circa 1965, just a couple of years after Dylan arrived on the scene in Greenwich Village. This morning, I can only bear to watch a second or two of young Dylan before moving on. In general, I can't watch any young Dylan footage anymore because it makes me feel too crappy about myself. Seeing Dylan, aged 22, 23 years, singing with the intensity and ambition that he does has this effect on me that goes beyond humbling; it borders on dispair. In Dylan's book, Chonicles Volume I, he has this great line about knowing his eventual fame from a very young age: (paraphrasing) "The world was shining its spotlight right at me, and nobody else."

I have this nagging feeling that I'm falling behind in life. I read and hear about younger people who are more successful than I am, you know, more money, more fame, great abs, the whole bit. Friends and co-workers my age are all on track to having wonderful little families of their own, if they don't already have one.

I'm on the JFK to SFO flight and catching up on my magazine reading. I bring 8 magazines with me on this trip. (I subscribe to about 20 magazines, so I would've brought more, if it weren't such a schlep.) Time magazine has this cover story, "The Secrets of Ambition: A surprising look at life's go-getters from its also-rans." The article profiles various famous people. For example, of Oprah, the article said: "She could read at 2, and although she was just 5 when she started school, she insisted on being put in first grade. Her teacher relented. The next year, young Oprah was skipped to third grade." I mean, crap, I'm pretty sure I wasn't reading until I was 5 or 6. At the end of third grade, I was offered the chance to skip fourth grade and my dad really wanted me to do it. But I was afraid to leave all my friends, so I basically filibustered (i.e. cried) until I got my way.

The article also profiled Vera Wang: she went to work at Vogue right out of college and put in 7-day work weeks. This helped her land the role of senior editor of the magazine at 23. I remember when I was 23: I was obsessed with bidding on Pokemon plush toys from eBay. (Hey, they were rare ones from Japan! You COULDN'T get them retail in the States!!!)

I didn't read the entire Time magazine article, actually. Maybe I wasn't ambitious enough? I just skimmed the little call-out boxes where they do the famous-people profiles, so I never did find out what's really "surprising" about life's go-getters vs. its also-rans.

I know a girl who's really pretty and nice. And smart! She has this endearing thing about her... he tends to blush very easily. Not that I'm the best at reading these things, but she might even like me. At the very least, she doesn't object to my presence. I want to ask her out. Should I?