It's not really all that new to me

My intuition was the first to warn me. Followed by the nervous glares, and perfectly punctuated compliments in all of the quiet pauses in our conversations, I knew something did not match up. Maybe that is the exact reason why I had to hang around, and attempt with every last hope of my journalistic mind to come up with some deep-seeded reason to his character.

But in the end, there is none.

Slowly, this city is starting to undress itself in front of my very eyes. People use this place. The hipsters, the vagrants, the creative, the academic, the worker bees, the politicians. And at the end of the day, we are all alone trying to promote the one thing we do well, whatever that may be. For some, it is a music career. For others, it is a new business, openly welcomed (maybe a little too readily welcomed) by all those within the city, eager to see another American Dream root itself and take ground. But that is just the problem, or maybe it is just the productive people I seem to migrate toward that end up taking what they need from you, and then rushing back to their own apartments, fresh with new perspective and ideas. But that is not your worldview. In fact, that is mine, and a really optimistic one at that. Then before you know it, you have some near-stranger straddling the seat across from yours in an all-night diner, attempting to relate back to the abstractions of humanity you brought up earlier.

We all come here for a purpose. The city is constantly moving, and the closer I glare into its orange and red bloodshot eyes, the more I realize it is not the ground that is moving, but the handfulls of motivated creators and shakers that never let this city settle. They come here, we come here, and we soak up this city. We take in the coffee shops, the tex mex, the dog parks, the drugs, the music scene, and if we're lucky, we leave. We leave better than we were when we first signed our shifty lease on the east side. In fact, most will leave for bigger and better places, taking with them a small part of Texas. But when we leave, we leave the city dry and dirty, our footprints littering the same sidewalks we vowed to keep clean. In the end, we are all just moving parts in this small world.

So why would a guy in his own working world want to tip that cup and welcome a new addition? I don't see why, myself. As fun as Austin can be, I have never been able to date here, because everyone is already dating themselves. And if there is one thing I cannot tolerate, it's wasteful narcissism.

As resistant as I was to the idea at first, I am realizing that I cannot date here, and there is no reason to try. I am allergic to everyone else's cats anyway, so we can just get that out of the way. And that is that.