Hipster Wannabe
It’s a nice day out today, and I decided to enjoy it a little before starting work. My plan was to go out into Prospect Park and walk the full inner loop, which is something like 3.5 miles, before coming back to write. That way I would get to enjoy the nice spring day, get some exercise so I’m not atrophying at home, and still have most of the day to work. It was a good plan, except I took Zomig last night for my migraine, and that made me sleep late and have a little trouble getting going. I didn’t get out of the house until almost noon.
You never know what you’re going to get when you take a prescription drug, especially a migraine drug, for the first time, but when you feel a whopper of a headache coming on, like I do once or twice a month, you do what you’ve gotta. Zomig performed okay, I guess, though it just took me past the “searing pain” stage and into the “feels like I have a bad hangover” stage. Meh.
Anyway, I figured that it made no sense to shower BEFORE I went to the park, so I just threw on whatever I was wearing yesterday and went out. I’m having a lot of trouble with chapter 14 of THE DESERT SPEAR, which was just supposed to be a “get the characters from point a to point b” chapter, but has grown into a beehive of good ideas that I should probably not pursue as it will add 100 pages to the story. I was hoping the walk would clear my head and enable me to separate the good from the bad.
It was then, as I walked dirtily through the park in the middle of a weekday, with my re-fillable bottle of water and new beard, listening to Vampire Weekend on my iPod and thinking about what to do next in my next novel, that I realized I have officially become a hipster.
How did this happen? I never meant it to. I mean… hipsters are douchebags, right? They sit for hours in Starbucks, looking like they just rolled out of bed, sipping lattes and listening to Damien Rice while they clack away on their mac laptops. Is that really what I’ve become?
Was it societal pressure? Did I feel some unconscious need to conform to the norm of my new “work from home” lifestyle., by adopting the examples shown to me? Is it like how people start to look like their pets sometimes? Or, probably closer to the truth, the way kids tend to grow up to be what people expect of them? The weak kid gravitates towards mental pursuits and the strong one towards sports because their parents and peers unconsciously nudge them in that direction.
Is that what’s happened to me? I don’t think so… I mean, I still feel like me. I don’t think I’ve changed in any fundamental way. It more like I am just living life the way I always wanted to and couldn’t because I was spending my life in a cubicle.
But then, didn’t I conform to cubicle life, too? I had my little chotchkes on my desk; my superhero action figures and things co-workers got me as Secret Santa gifts, my personalized wall calendar and dumb cartoons pinned to the felt wall. I wasted my day on the same websites as everyone else, and had huge overlong conversations on Instant Messenger instead of working.
Ugh. Trying to unweave free will from societal pressures is almost impossible. I guess we all have that problem, no matter who we are.
I just hope that this doesn’t make me a hypocrite for mocking all my hipster friends all these years. Probably not, because it’s normal to give your friends shit (take the piss out of them, for my UK readers!), and I never meant it cruelly.
At least I didn’t try to enact a bunch of anti-hipster legislation. That’s where REAL hypocrisy starts, IMHO.
Augh! See? Only hipsters type things like IMHO!
Crap on a stick! I can’t stop!
Help!
I’m not so sure Pete, but then again what do I know? Thinking that I’m more just an aging nerd, the 25-year-old at my part time gig actually asked me at lunch the other day, “Are you a hipster?” Maybe because I had my lace-less Converse All-Stars and wore a Weaser-esque sweater? Hell if I know, I always assumed I was way too uncool to be a hipster. And I was always a fan of wearing sneakers. Who asks someone if they are a hipster anyway?
“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottom of my [khakis] rolled.”
You are not a hipster.
I dunno, Jay. Those thick-rimmed glasses are a dead giveaway.
I kind of get the impression that hipsters were never cool when they were young, and then stopped caring if they were cool when they got older (thus becoming cool, since the essence of cool is not caring what other people think of you and just doing what you want).
Matt – maybe not in the traditional sense of the word. But since many of the hipster-isms are so intertwined with the publishing lifestyle and life in general in ny I’m not sure the term applies only to annoying youngsters living in Williamsburg anymore.
Look, if you’re both right, then Peat, you definitely don’t qualify. Blogging about how you think you’ve become a hipster is just a form of very un-hipstery self awareness. Also, you JUST signed up for Facebook. The hipsters left that shit months ago.
Hipsters are “cool” in that they have an almost pregognitive ability to keep their fingers on the ever-changing cultural pulse, allowing them to set the trends and then abandon them when too many of us non-hipsters jump onto their bandwagon. I know hipsters. YOU know hipsters. And you, sir, are no hipster.
Though with that beard and no day job, you could probably infiltrate one of their weekend meetings and take notes for the rest of us wannabes.
Also, regarding “IMHO”? Hipsters don’t say that… 12-year-old girls do. You’re not one of those either.
Just embrace your Peat-ness.
Good point(s) sir. But in some cases, like the wearing of Vans, Converse All-Stars and Etnies, I was way before the curve and the hipsters have finally caught up. I’m slightly upset that my sneaker wearing ways have become so hip, because I’ve worked very hard to make it acceptable and now it’s the norm, and they get the credit.
Pete – Infiltrate…resistance is futile.
I have to agree with Matt. Sorry.
I’ve always figured that not caring about what other people thought about you was known as maturity. But what do I know? I hang out with 16 year old girls and boys all day.
Matt, you are giving hipsters WAAAAY too much credit. They’re more or less as conformist as everyone else. None of the hipsters I know have precognitive ability to stay on top of trends. The term may have meant that once, but in common parlance it is more of a social/lifestyle trend. Plenty of hipsters think music peaked with Pearl Jam, movies peaked with Pulp Fiction, and spend hours blogging about self-indulgent nonsense (like me). What do you think they are typing on their macbooks whilst sipping $7 coffee at Starbucks. TPS reports? I don’t think so.
Besides, who made you the expert? You’re still in denial about the end of the metrosexual fad.
P.S.
I don’t really type IMHO. I just threw that in to be funny.
Hipster, non-Hipster. Who cares?
What you are, is happy.
That’s good enough for me.
A grande white chocolate mocha only costs $4.05 up here in Westchester. You should stop buying coffee in the city.
You may be a hipster, but you’re not cool. To be cool, you need Mickey Mouse pants and a sombrero.
Mickey Mouse pants ARE quite cool.
I think it’s the big yellow buttons.
Ha! Comment #7 was caught by my spam filter and held for moderation because of all the brand names.