The things that keep me awake at night

So now I'm restless. It's easy when you're working and every moment of your time is spent busy or asleep in preparation for the chaos. But when things slow down, that's when your brain speeds up and all of a sudden reality crashes into you at the equal but opposite velocity that you've been going, and you realize that things aren't the way they're supposed to be. You're working and making money, in other words making that fictitious "living" that your parent or guardian has been preaching to you ever since you've moved home, and you feel accomplished in the fact that you're not a total waste of space. But you still are. You're not exactly who you're supposed to be. Perhaps my dreams and aspirations out-do my actual being, but there's a giant (and maybe complete) part of me that thinks that everything I'm doing is wrong. If I don't value money in the classical sense then why am I wasting my youth making it? I know you need money to survive in this world but where's the imagination in that? Oscar Wilde once quoted for the internet "Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a serious lack of imagination". I don't lack in imagination, that's for damn sure: I spend the majority of my life living in a world that's completely made up in my own brain, but as far as actual action on the part of that imagination is concerned, I could use a little upgrade. I want and I plead for some flair in my life but I don't go out and get it. If I knew what I wanted I'm sure I'd have it by now, but it's the object of my desire that's evading me at this juncture in time. I'm working with people who can only dream the possible and I want for the impossible, the way a junky needs a fix but all he can find is some asprin: my desire is just out of my reach and instead of really trying for it I'm settling for what's available. I need to fix that. But how? Reach for what I want right now? But my wants change with the weather, and I'm scared of going for what I'm not meant to have. So what do you do? I'm 22 and I'm wasting my youth. Everyone older than I (or those who have luckily figured out what they want at an early age, stupid bastards) tell me that I'm right on track and I'll figure it out soon enough. My sister tells me that when I know I'll just know, the way a person who falls in love just knows for certain on a gut level that it's right. Apparently there's an internal instinct that will kick in and fate will fall into place and the stars will align in my favor and everything will work out just swimmingly. I want to punch people in the groin every time they tell me this. It may be the calm and collected way they present the information, or perhaps just the vague ambiguity of the entire idea itself, but it infuriates me. Of course that's what these people think, they've already figured it all out. They don't have this gnawing, snarling, anxious feeling in the pit of their stomach all day everyday since graduation. Sure sometimes it's dulled, but I can't be high all the time. Sometimes sobriety takes over and the real world butts in and reminds me that I'm doing jack shit with my life, besides getting people drunk or serving them coffee, depending on the time of day and the venue I find myself in. It's all a bunch of rubbish in my opinion, and if this is the path I'm supposed to be on I'd rather forge my own, and make it a major detour at that. I'm sick of sitting on the couch on my days off. I'm sick of waking up dreading the work day. I'm sick of sitting in traffic on the way to a destination that isn't supposed to be waiting for my arrival. I want to understand what I'm actually supposed to do with my time on this wretched planet and I want to know now. If it sounds like I'm whining, I am. Wah. So there. Apparently adulthood has actually set me back about a decade as far as maturity is concerned. And maybe that's a good thing. When I was 12 or even younger I could dream as big as I wanted and I didn't have to worry about what sort of money would fill up my gas tank at the end of the day. All I really had to worry about was impending puberty and whether or not Mom had bought me Lucky Charms for breakfast tomorrow. Fortunately with that scenario Mom actually has bought me Lucky Charms, so I guess I should complain a little less. But unlike 10 years ago, Lucky Charms don't solve all of my problems. I still live with a mother who knows I prefer Lucky Charms, and if that isn't depressing I don't know what else may be (to be honest I know about a trillion things more depressing, but for the sake of this essay let's just pretend my problems are the most dire things in this complicated world. Thanks for the cooperation). I just wish for the sake of wishing that life didn't take so much time to figure out and that perhaps we could understand a little more in a little less time. Maybe that's not the journey I'm supposed to be on, but to channel Forrest Gump, when does destiny give way to actual action? When do we stop letting life direct our lives and we actually start directing life the way we see things going for ourselves? Are we all floating along or do we have a say on where the breeze sends us? And the fact that I am 22 has equally annoying angles: I'm so young still that I have time to waste, but any time wasted is still wasted time and I should be putting every moment to good use, especially while I'm so young. With me there's no point to argue, I apparently have a come back for every angle. This is where my overactive brain leads me at 3am and I find myself awake 2 hours before I have to be up for work trying to figure out why I'm going to work at my job in the first place. If money didn't exist I'd be extraordinarily curious to know what each individual on this planet would be doing with their time. If all that existed was life, independent of any consumerism, how would we live out each day? That's how I want to exist. I want to know what it's like to not feel stress or burdens, to not wish that I had more money or feel stuck somewhere because of a lack of it. If we lived in Utopia, I'd be the Queen, and I'd make sure everyone alive would know the feeling of money-less joy and euphoria. Maybe that's why my imagination takes precedent over any sort of reality that I wake up to: it's more beautiful to live in that world than the one we've created.

StoryTime: A Fictitious Tale in Incongruent Installments

They say people come here when they run out of places to run. I call it an eclectic collection of lost souls finding refuge in one another. Cue Billy Joel and you’ll get what I’m saying. It’s not bleak though and it’s not sad. There’s a kind of happiness in these patrons eyes, a glimmer of hope that rejects societies judgments of them. They defy convention in some of the most attractive ways a human can, and although people don’t quite accept them, here they find others who appreciate their eccentricities in a way popular culture refuses to. When someone sees the world from another perspective they are called artistic. But those who invent that perspective, then don’t make an officially successful story out of their vision are called failures, rejects, slums of society who mooch off those who made something of themselves. But are the makers better than the visionaries? How much do we benefit from those who produce objects or concepts for mass consumption? There must always be a winner and a loser, and looking around one would label this demographic closer to the losing end of life. But here I see the most vivaciously decorated souls on the planet. Regardless of market success, they stick to their quirks and ideas like rats to a glue trap. Rejection piled over with defeat is the motivation they take with them to continue living life the only way they know how: with poignant and unfaltering passion. It’s just a bar, but in the eyes of the helpless romantics it’s one of the last safe havens for those of a truly unique flavor.
There are of course the regulars that provide nightly flair and a certain unpredictability that’s become customary in this antiquated establishment. My first night working here I was introduced to Al, a balding Welshman who drinks away his two failed marriages and the decade old death of his third wife, all the while trying desperately to convince me of his actual preferred sobriety. His laugh can shake the foundation, as could one or two of his green giant-like stomps on the barroom floor, and one can’t help but wonder if an overwhelming laugh is meant expressly for convincing his audience of his true and infallible happiness with the way his life has turned out. He can usually take home a pretty girl or two, so I can’t imagine that his nights are spent missing any of his former loves too much.
In direct contradiction to Al is Cookie, a sixty year old black stoner grandmother who drinks a double shot of Bacardi rum, warm and straight from the plastic cups that are a staple of this run down bar. She’s full of rebellious charm that she dishes out between gulps of her chosen tonic. Standing a measly five feet tall she brags of a life full of love and family, punctuated sporadically with a few government jobs that could never squash her bravado. Her stories are always colorful and usually end with a verbal image of her smoking a joint on her front porch, cackling loudly into the sunset about a life she leads regardless of what anyone, including her boss, may think or say to her. She never leaves the bar without a few hugs for all those around, hugs she forgets she’s given immediately after she leaves your embrace, a side effect she lovingly blames on the pot.
There are other, more enigmatic patrons who only grace us with their presence once or twice a month. There’s a traveling salesman who boasts of his family back home, a family consisting of a son and a new daughter in law who are continuously in the middle of creating a home for themselves, and a wife who paints the most beautiful pictures you’ll ever see. There’s a couple always on the brink of engagement who you can tell could never imagine a more perfect match than one another, yet can’t seem to make that final commitment that usually just leads to life-dulling repetition, which they can’t quite swallow at this current juncture. Kudos to them for seeing through the haze.
On this particular evening my senses were jolted by the slightly crooked yet blindingly white smile of a handsome young stranger. He spent merely two minutes in my world ordering a drink, then chose a quiet table nearby for himself and his vertically impaired companion with a muted limp who couldn’t help but make awkward sidelong glances at the bar and, coincidentally I’m sure, myself. The pair spent a while talking in emphatic whispers, and from the outside one would suspect a certain romantic relationship between them, but something about the taller gentleman just didn’t scream gay to me, and my gay-dar is nearly always accurate. Although I’m inundated with various other customers demanding their libations, my mind and usually my peripheral vision can’t quite ignore this strange couple: my imagination invents a leader-in-the-making and his quirky sidekick who is always available to do his bidding or just offer support and unyielding admiration. I dub them Hook and Smee for lack of their actual names and identities. The stouter of the two, Smee, rarely takes his eyes from Hook and by the confident demeanor of this man I can tell this arrangement is probably not serendipitous. I wonder what they are so eager to discuss, whether or not they’re plotting the take-over of the American democratic system or if they are simply musing over the month’s unusual weather pattern. As the night lingers on their conversation intensifies and it seems to me that they’ve forgotten the existence of anyone else but each other. After about an hour, Hook makes one blatant but seamless motion and is out of his seat and back in my world, ordering another beer and this time one for his buddy. I’m instantly caught off-guard but almost as immediately I go on the defensive, doubting his easy confidence and instead suspecting a sort of manipulative arrogance that most attractive men carry on their shoulders. For some reason my mind wanders to cult leaders and the effervescent personalities that attract their followers. This man could be a priest with sadistic intentions, bent on being worshipped by hundreds and looked on as a prophet that could lead the masses to salvation. Perhaps my overactive imagination is a by-product of the daily repetition that intrudes on my life, but this man is by no means just a harmlessly attractive guy: you can always sense cockiness in a stranger and this stranger in front of me was covered in it. My curiosity urged me to ask what was so interesting but my occasional shyness was activated in his presence and I found myself handing over his drinks with nothing but a smile and a quiet “Thank you”. His eager wingman is waiting with breath baited, I’m sure, and I watch as Hook gulps down his beer before beginning wherever he left off. Smee nods with consent at each passing word and as this act carries on I can see Hook growing increasingly confident. I find myself bored with these two and instead turn my attention elsewhere in the bar, to more lofty imaginative aspirations. Hook and Smee will have to wait while I dream another group into a band of pirates, or something eqully thrilling to hold my attention for this night's shift.

Stalemate

I think there's a very distinct danger in not knowing exactly what you want. There's an even more serious danger in not knowing what you want but knowing what you definitely don't want and having infallible motivation but no direction. You're ready to jump off the ledge and never look back but you don't know what you're jumping in to. What's going to catch you at the bottom of the fall: water? which will cradle the impact but could eventually drown you; rocks? which will just straight up kill you; or the longest fall of your life which takes your breath and evenutally your consciousness away from you, leaving you with nothing but the serenity of nothingness, no definite here or there, no permanent yes or no. You just float. Each option has a downside, yet each prospect of not knowing has its appeal. What do you do when you're looking into the abyss and you have no idea of what you want to see below you? What do you do when you're ready to leave everything behind you and start all over, but you don't know where to start? How do you stand at the starting line without knowing what sort of race you've signed up for? And do you just jump at the gun and see where the race takes you, or do you resign and wait for the right sort of race to come along, no matter how long that takes? How do you figure it all out? And what if you think you know with some sort of certainty, and then one day you wake up and can't believe that's what you thought was right, and there's no way in the world that your current reality could be how you want to live your life? Wanting something and not knowing what that something is is absolutely terrifying. Being so absorbed in this cyclic repetition is exhausting. Living each day with no distinct purpose or definite direction is infuriating. Waking up not knowing is exciting though. But with the change of each day and the passing of each idea, I seem to grow less certain of the certainty I feel towards anything which inevitably changes my mind because why should I trust my instincts when they've lead me astray countless times before? Every time I've though "This is absolutely without any hint of a doubt exactly what I want to do and who I want to be" it's changed, within a day, a week, or a month. Nothing's lasted the test of time. So why should I act when acting could mean making a decision? Did I say decision? I meant mistake. Freudian slip? Or slip of the tongue towards what I really think, wish, or dream I could do, when what I really want to do is make a damn decision and stick to it. But what if it's the wrong dream? Possibly more terrifying than my current state is the possibility of my future state: getting somewhere and then figuring out that it's nowhere close to where I want or am meant to be. How do you make a commitment when you know that the most terrifying idea of all is commiting to something? In chess they call it a stalemate. You move your queen in any direction and you lose. You leave her where she is and the enemy eats you alive. Standing still is your only option, and the recipe for your demise. Game over. But you're 22. Wait, 23. Shit. Time keeps moving. And there you stand, frozen in the headlights, awake in the dream where you can't run a step but the enemy keeps advancing, the enemy being the future and each try for a step is in a different direction. You fall, you get up, you run, you fall. You don't wake up. There is no waking up. This is life, in all its dramatic flair, and the passing of days drones in your ears like a continuously sounding alarm clock begging you to get the hell out of bed already and start your day. Or your life. Forgive my dramatic nature but it is after all your life, dull and boring, inescapable and real. The decisions weigh too heavy to deal with today, I'll wake up early and do something productive tomorrow. No wait, tomorrow. No wait, shit, I woke up late again. And on it goes. There is no here or there, no yes or no.

F*** You, Work!

Working sucks. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, and if you're lucky enough to still call yourself a student, hang on for dear life. The working world is a crock of shit. They lure you in with the promise of money and all you're left with is the nagging notion that you shouldn't be where you are, at least that's the feeling I've had for the past month or so. Yea the money's great, (well good at least) and I am happy that I have a reason to get up in the morning besides needing to pee, but WORKING SUCKS. If I'm not at work I'm getting ready for work, or driving to or from work, or sleeping because I have to go to work soon. I can't sit and read a book, I can't go to the beach, I haven't plucked my eyebrows in weeks and I'm single-handedly bringing the Brooke Shields 80's caterpiller brow back into style as a result. I'm smarter than the majority of my bosses (I edited an email for my manager the other day, and let's just say I felt like I was an elementary school teacher) and my pre-existing lack of respect for authority coupled with the idea that I could do my managers jobs better than they leaves me with the sense that I'm on the wrong path to success. In fact, my path isn't a path, it's a stoop and it's on the door step of life-sucking annoyance in the form of dead-end employment. At one of my jobs, the one that I usually have to be at at 6:15 am (my former drunken bedtime) I work with middle-aged women who are for the most part divorces who never went to college and smoke like chimneys and cough accordingly. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arrogant or rude enough to think I'm above these people; if anything I respect them for their life experiences and the fact that they've weathered them all so heroically. However, me ending up where I am now at the age they are now would mean an asteroid hit the planet and we all had to start back from zero: plainly said, I don't want to see my life turn out like theirs. The theory I've worked out to ease my fears is that they lacked a sense of direction which ultimately resulted in their present circumstances. Most of them got married really young, popped out some offspring and then ditched the guy for more sunny horizons. But they still work a minumum wage job and live paycheck to paycheck. This I credit to their lack of schooling. I know college isn't a get rich quick scheme but I also know that the more you know the more respect you garner, which would lift me up from the immigrant labor force that I've joined. I sometimes look around and laugh in my head that I'm vacuuming up a banquet hall or delivering pizzas and I have a college degree. My worry I guess is getting stuck where I am. So I need some direction. Roll in the truck-load of problems that accompany that statement and you'll see where my troubled thoughts derive from. I don't know what I want to do with my life, thus the reason I mostly drank my way through college. But now that I have all this time to sit and think about what I want to do (and a few experiences behind me that allow me cross alot off the list of choices) I realize that I want to do too much and perhaps need to be a little more focused. I've considered a myraid of options: dolphin trainer, professional traveler, teacher, record producer, boat enthusiast, etc., so you see my problem with varying interests and my nearly flawless fear of commitment. For me to say "I want to do ____ for the rest of my life" and then stick to the _____ is an obstacle I've been encountering for two decades now. Yea I have ideas, but most of them are so incredibly out of the box and so far-fetched that they're almost embarassing to admit. As a bartender people constantly ask me what I'm doing with my life, how I ended up behind the bar for them to drink from and talk to. My answers always lead to them lending their two sense: "You should go back to school", "Why don't you open a consulting business", "I'm a banker and I make good money" and bla bla bla and I usually tune out the minute they start throwing me ideas. It's not that I'm unappreciative of their help, I just can't imagine doing something so boring with my life as opening up a personality consultation business for employing hotel workers (a legitimate suggestion from a British landscape architect). I attribute my rebeliousness to my age and the fact that my parents are still basically supporting me so I don't actually have to worry about money yet. But I don't want to get stuck in some job that I loathe with unbridled passion: I'd rather focus that passion on something I'm actually passionate about. The problem with far-fetched dreams is that it takes more than minimal effort to achieve them. Go back to my catch 22 about needing money to follow your dreams and you'll land where I am: my dreams are slowly diminishing as all this working douses my passions because I'm so exhausted from working all the time. There's no end to the bullshit. You either need a job to make money or you have a job and are making money but can't do anything fun with it because you have to work all the time. The old fashioned mind-set that our country is based on is failing on me as I'm seeing through the crap and don't want to waste my life stressing about work and money, which apparently is the American dream. Everyday that I go to work I think about what I could be doing: going to the beach for instance or moving to India to make a documentary.Why am I settling for something so boring? Why am I wasting my time and my youth bartending at a hotel, seating people in a dining room so they can eat breakfast or delivering them pizza's after a long day at Disney? If I pride myself so much on thinking outside the box, why am I not doing that now? Why am I not dreaming up some scheme to make me money whilst I travel the world and see everything there is to see? I know I'm only 22 but there are people who are younger and doing more. I guess I just feel stuck, and if I'm collecting these nagging ideas after only a month of mind-numbing employment then I can't imagine my life a few months from now. I already feel like a part of me is dying, that young and happy-go-lucky attitude that I've attempted to covet for a few years now seems to be slipping away. I used to laugh myself to tears on the daily, now I'm lucky if I genuinely smile and laugh, as opposed to the fake smile/laugh combo that I've developed during my hours of talking to annoyingly corny tourists. I used to scoff at stress and responsibility and now it's become so familiar to me I almost can't imagine spending time without it. I don't mind stress if I'm stressing about something I care about, but I honestly don't care if your pizza is delivered hot and fresh in a timely manner. I'm bitter about being bitter and I find myself doing little things here and there just to stick it to the man: for example, last night was my first training night for my new career of delivering pizzas in one of my hotels. I sit in the dining room and wait for the phone to ring, then make a faux Pizza Hut pizza and deliver it to a guest's room. In between doing nothing and making our own food in the kitchen, the hotel bartender brought me and my trainer (a nineteen year of Colombian chicka who could care less if the pizza's even have cheese on them) a cup of tequila and some limes, which we took shots of in the back storage closet. Like I said, stick it to the man. It's the little things you really have to start appreciating. I think I need to make a drastic career move.

Untitleable

Sooooooooo (drum roll please) I got a job! Actually, I got two jobs! Recession my ass, it just takes a little effort people! And I'm obviously kidding, I don't want angry, unemployed psychos coming after me for mocking their troubles: I'm sure you're doing all you can. Carry on, soldier. In the midst of all my rejoicing at having a ligitimate reason to get up in the morning (besides the strawberry pancakes that my mom has been making, pancakes with a deliciously permeating aroma that comes wafting into my nostrils at the crack of noon and lures me, bleary-eyed and starving, to the kitchen to partake in their fluffy, buttery, syrup-covered ecstasy), I realized that all my employment goodness starts on the fourth of July, a holiday I was looking forward to spending in Tallahassee with my fabulous collection of friends. Now, as the princess cries into her money and wipes her ass with flakes of gold, I realize that I have nothing to complain about: I have an income and in times like these I should be licking my employers shoes clean at the end of the day, not whining that I don't get to go get drunk with my bffs. And in a strangely mixed up Body Snatchers sort of way, I'm glad that I'm not going up to school again to have a reunion with all these incredible people that I spent a few of the most unbelievable years of my short life with. It's too soon. Now, ye of whom I speak, do not distress. My motivation for these thoughts are not as simple or rude as they sound. College was a surreal, almost dream-like experience that can never be replicated or duplicated, nor should it. In its moment it was nearly perfect, everything happened as it should have and in most cases things happened in a manner that no one in even their most vividly altered state of mind could have imagined. It's tragic to say, but I think I've moved on. Not saying that if I was still in school I wouldn't bump this responsibility notion to the curb, ditch work which would ultimately end in my termination (been there, done that) and drive my happy butt up to my beautiful apartment and relish in the debauchery until my toenails fell off (done that too). But I've started something new, something that I want to do, something that's going to give me a new sense of satisfaction, at least for the next few months. My state of mind has changed. I did the partying, staying up past sunrise, living my life from Thursday to Sunday lifestyle and I had a blast. But even Kegger Barbie needs to grow up and get her M.D. one day. I like the direction my new, slightly less crazy and slightly more responsible self is going (please note the usage of the word "slightly" and appreciate its connotations). Now that I'm not strapped down with classes I feel less need to rebel so avidly and frequently. I'm finally calling the shots in my life and deciding what the next adventure is going to be. It's strange and terrifying as all get out but it's the most exciting thing I've ever attempted. And what made me get here is all the years I spent in school yearning for my freedom. And the people that accompanied me along the way, those who allowed me to sit, stand, or fall down next to them while they tripped along their own path, are frozen in my mind in a cryogenic state of utterly blemish-free perfection. When I left high school for college I was a complete wreck: I cried for days and feared that I would never find anything or anyone as fantastic as what I had had for those four years. My first semester at school was a catastrophe because I was so stuck in another place to which nothing could compare and I never gave anything a chance to compare, at least not at first. I couldn't adjust to what was happening and resented my situation for being so beyond my control. From that situation came a few incredible friendships that have lasted to this day, and as time passed things only became more amazing and my circle of friends grew and grew until it became a family. Finally, my fear of change and my anxiety because of it decreased and I found myself again, only better and much more able to adjust than my angsty teenage predecessor. Because of the people I met and the situations I found myself in (and a few times, found my way out of) I figured out life from a different perspective and started to be enchanted by change and the idea of new prospects. Life went from being stomach churning (not butterflies, think food poisoning) to remarkably electrifying. Now, as I'm setting out on this exhilarating new adventure, I have those people and those memories to remind me that even though things may suck at first and look bleek and foreboding, there's that stupid silver lining that will eventually give way to the sun, and happiness will not be permanently evasive. Going back would be incredible, but if I'm unable to feel that feeling one more time, I have all these new ones to remind me of what I had and to encourage me along my way. Now, as Dorothy skips down her yellow brick road into the sunset and the theater lights ignite the tear-stained but utterly inspired audience faces, I must comment: if I could find a way out of all this working bullshit I'd rapidly invent an instantaneous transporting device and zap myself into my old backyard quicker than I could blink, nothing could break my stride, nothing could hold me down, oh no. It's just that knowing I can't is heartbreaking. But, finally, instead of yearning to be where I can't be I'm just elated that I can say that's where I once was.

Arrogant Idealism

One of the things I love about being 22 is the fact that when I say I have dreams and goals for my life, people don't doubt me automatically: I'm still young enough to see them through to fruition. Give me a few years and I'm sure people will start looking at me like I'm insane, or like I'm a bum who needs to get a job and introduce myself to reality. My roommate and I spent quite a bit of time discussing idealism. Our main concern with graduation was the fact that we had to enter the forbidden "real world" and start being logical and responsible and give up the notion that life could be all we wanted it to be. So when does reality kick in and idealism get kicked to the curb? I've met adults who have said to me "Oh wow, to be 22 again", in a whistful tone that can only insinuate that I know something or think something that somewhere along the way they have lost. Or that I'm only 22 and I still have time to make my dreams a reality. So where does that all go wrong? When do our dreams go from being possible to irrational? Does it all stop when the bills start piling up? Does idealism take a back seat to logical decisions when we start to weigh just what's important in life? And what exactly is important? What are our priorities and when do they start to shift? For a fleeting moment in my college career I was an English major (a field I quickly abandoned the minute the emo intellectual kid in the corner started reading poems to us about his toothbrush) and we were inundated with prose about lost dreams, abandoned hopes, wishes unfulfilled, and lives that were completely empty because of the aformentioned circumstances. But I have to sit and wonder: when do these hopes get tossed to the wayside and where does our passion for life go? Do our goals change? And if they do, why do we settle for goals that don't make us anywhere near as happy as we could be if we had just kept trying, just given things a little more effort? Those who are successful are those who never give up, never give in to failure, who keep trying even when everyone in the world says sit down and shut up. So what does it take? I've always thought of myself as possesing a sort of confidence that almost borders on arrogance. The normal characteristics associated with being a girl (for example, modesty) have never wasted their time on me, I've more closely identified with the supreme arrogance that I can only associate with guys: that idea that everything I touch could turn to gold and everything I say is probably right because it's coming out of my mouth. Thus this blog. I didn't study subjects in school that made sense or that would guarantee me a job or money right after graduation. Instead I turned to more fanciful subjects and usually just ignored school altogether, instead focusing on my social life and relationships that I deemed more valuable or practical than an education. For me, education took place more outside the classroom than in. Yet, even though I barely graduated and with no honors to speak of, with no future plans or concrete paths set for me to walk on, I still think I'm going to be a huge success. For some reason, I still think that everything is going to work out fabulously for me, that I'll be outstandingly wealthy and prosperous and that nothing can hold me down. Me. Who has no job and should be panicking at the thought of bills and rent payments and the cost of food or gas, here I sit, cool as that cliched cucumber (lord, it must be completely frozen by now) and I have not a worry in the world. So when does my idealism come crashing down around me? I don't fear authority (another problem with my arrogant psyche) and I don't think that someone banging down my door to collect for my cell phone bill is going to phase me. I just don't see what the big deal is. SO WHEN DOES MY IDEALISM END? Perhaps what I have is the making of an actual success story. Perhaps the secret to it all is some sort of irrational, arrogant idealism that doesn't get squashed by the mudane tasks of day to day living. Sure, I'm still going to be over the moon when I get the call that someone wants to pay me for some sort of skill that I possess, but only because I realize that that is just a stepping stone to what I actually perceive my life's goal to be. And there isn't a stopping point until that goal is sitting in front of me, toasting my success with a cold beer and a thousand of my closest friends. So logic be damned and let idealism rage like it's 2009. I'm bound and determined to not eat my words in ten years, so let this rant be a promise: I will be a success, if i have to claw my way through the trenches the whole way there, I will see my goals through to the end. As for now, I'm still waiting by the phone, hoping to hear those phantom words... "You're hired!"

Catch 22

Graduating from college in the year 2009 will go down in history as one of the worst ideas ever, right up there with giving Paris Hilton her own reality shows (yes, tragically plural) and spam (can shaped meat product? ew). It's not that I'm not glad to be done with school, but I've passed the last weeks-full of days hanging out with my parents and the most exciting social interactions I've had have been with my cats. "There are no jobs!" cries the media, yet my mom won't get off my ass about making money. Did I mention I have $300 in the bank and a $500 rent payment due in a week? Yes, I'm paying rent for an apartment I haven't stepped foot in in almost a month, because I still have a lease but I couldn't afford to live on my own anymore because I can't find a job. Talk about a fucked up catch 22. And it's not like I'm actually looking for a career or anything, I just need some shit job that won't make me want to jump out of a moving car at the end of the work day. Is that so much to ask? Capitalism is great, it keeps the motivated ones motivated and gives lazy assholes such as myself something to complain about. It pisses me off that to survive in the world I have to make money doing something that I don't really want to do so that I can buy things that I don't actually need to survive, all to distract me from my only actual purpose in life which is to reproduce. One of the classes I took in my last semester at Florida State University (Go Noles!) was "Evolution of Human Sexuality", a provocative class that explored the "theory" of the female orgasm (a hypothesis volunteered by a man, or what I like to call a clueless ass bag) and the mating patterns of various indigenous tribes in Africa. Two days a week we watched people and animals alike fornicate on a 10 foot screen and then talked about how and why. Quite riviting subject matter for horny and usually hung-over college students. My roommate and I would sit and giggle during class, all the while approaching the realization that the motivation behind everything we do (literally, everything) is to have sex and pass along our genes, and anything that isn't geared toward this is a direct result of it. This made my social life a bit more entertaining because I started to look at everything as a simple mating ritual: girls dress up and go out to advertise their goodies so guys will have sex with them. Guys brag about themselves and flash their money, if they have it, so that girls will have sex with them. People go out and lube their shy egos with alcohol so that approaching someone of the opposite sex is easier and getting someone to spend the night with them is almost guaranteed (probably the main reason why Prohibition was so unpopular). It became almost sickening watching this same scene play out over and over and it became even more nauseating knowing how often I had played into the game before I came to this earth-shattering realization, not that I wasn't having fun living in my blissful ignorance. If people just layed it all out on the table, said "Hey I'm looking for someone to complement my genetic make-up so I can produce healthy child-bearing children to pass on my genes so that my family line doesn't end with me thereby failing at the only goal and purpose of my entire existence, wanna help?", then I'd have a bit more respect for them, and they'd save alot of time and money. But I digress. The point of it all is that we get jobs to buy things to distract us. Everytime someone falls in love they preach about how nothing material can compare, that it's all just a waste without this magical thing called love. But they still work their jobs and buy their things because we live exhaustingly long lives and who can just have sex and babies all day every day for upwards of 80 years? We need a break. The problem is, all these distractions have become our main focus, sex and love taking a back seat to BMWs and 75 inch plasma screen televisions. We've turned these little breaks into our lives, breaking our backs to meet quotas and impress other people with our plumage, so to speak. The upside of the fact that I'm a girl is that I could just have sex and babies for the rest of my life and let my husband break his back so I can have a nice house and car and send Billy and Susie to summer camp every year so I can go shopping with my gal pals. The problem with that plan is that I have a brain and a conscience, so drifting through life being a consumer isn't the fulfillment I'm looking for. Which brings me back to my point: I have no job. Not only do I have no job but I also have no boyfriend to distract me from that fact and I left most of my friends back at school. Alcohol is swiftly losing its appeal and due to my limited resources any herbal refreshments that I usually partake in have become too expensive for my current monetary situation. I'm left with nothing but myself and the nagging feeling that time is passing too quickly and I'm still sitting here, writing a blog in my childhood room in my childhood home with my parents in the kitchen and I don't know where to go or what to do, and I have no money to go anywhere or do anything so I need a job so that I can live up my new-found freedom. Talk about a fucked up catch 22.