Suffocating

Washington is a strange town, a small town, especially when you consider that it pretty much controls the fate of the world.

I always wanted to live here. I've been here for four long years now, and I'm tired of it. I'd consider going to Iraq for a year just to get away. I'm not a small town person, but I'm afraid I don't have many places left to go. Although I guess smaller towns in other places with more energy might be more bearable.

I'm leaving once baseball season is over. It's suffocating me. Same damn people, same damn gibberish, same damn ideological garbage spewing from unthinking mouths. It doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you're on. I feel like there is no real thought involved in anything - it's all just this stupid formula. You're supposed to say this, dress like that, wear your stupid little pin on your lapel and a red or blue tie, because anything else is not American pie. I feel trapped, incarcerated, a victim of some pre-conceived notion of history, as if it has already been written for the future.

You know what's funny? Most of the country would think of this place as the "big city." I'm running circles around here, smashing into glass doors like a stupid bird or something. Everyone here thinks they know how the world works. I may be a stupid kid in the grand scheme of things, but I know enough to know I don't know everything, that I don't know anything, really. I never claimed I knew everything here. Conversely, I've always said I'm trying to figure it all out. I wish the policy wonks would try, too.