Mike Tigas

I owe you some stories from the first week, I know. I’ll get to that later, though.

Feeling sick of my small (and spartan) apartment, I wander around town tonight, looking for something to do. I’d felt a bit too much of a stranger, just wandering downtown the past few days… Most of downtown just seems a bit too upscale for me — at least, on a night like tonight — so I go a bit off the beaten path: downtown, but not quite the city center. I stumble upon the Empyrean Coffee House, this little coffee shop / bar / music venue just a few blocks from where I live…

Really reminds me of the places I used to hang out at back home. You know, the Blue Fugue, or Lakota, or the Cherry Street Artisan… Soulful music — and by that I mean your smalltime touring musicians and local artists — really nice people, and a little artsy/cultured/counterculture (that’s a weird mix, I know) feel to the establishment.

I walk up to the bar and get myself a beer. One man at the bar immediately notices the St. Louis Cardinals hat I’m wearing.

Continue reading ‘Small World’

Three days from now I’ll be flying over the western half of the continental United States. I’ll be moving up to the Inland Empire, where I don’t know anyone, and where I’ll be starting some really awesome work. In five days, I’m going to be working at the Spokesman-Review, starting my work in an awesome full-scale Django project they’re cooking up — possibly the largest and most fulfilling project I’ll have worked on yet. If anything, it seems as if adulthood and age are starting to catch up with me here.

“Are you nervous?” friends have often asked me. It’s a natural thing to ask, with such a big summer in store for me. But it’s practically the only thing they ask.

“No,” I said once. “I’m keeping it off my mind.” My voice carries the tone of a graduating high schooler — a naïve calm and the underestimation of significant changes ahead.

I’ve kept up a steady and blank state of denial for the past month or so, keeping my emotions down and taking care of business — such as signing my apartment — with an almost mechanical stoicism. I’m not thinking about it. I’m just doing it.

“Do you need anything else from us? Is there anything else we can help you with?” ask the folks at the Spokesman-Review — the newspaper that I’ll soon call my job.

“Nope,” I say. “I think I’ve gotten most things on my end figured out. I’ll just wing everything else when I get there.” Again, I was simply putting it off my mind.

I’m starting to pack my things, trying to figure out what’s necessary and what’s not — I need to survive three months on my own two feet and I need to choose carefully here. I can’t ignore it now.

“Now that I think about it, I’m not that nervous,” I told one friend. “Actually, I’m looking forward to it more than anything.”