school’s in <2 weeks. still hasn’t hit me. wtf

If I had to state what I viewed as the thing I was most grateful for, it was that my first year of college was a huge lesson. I fucked up a lot. A lot of terrible stuff happened.

I was naive, and happy before college started. But, to say that my happiness only existed because of naivete is just not the truth. I was a thinker, no doubt. I lived much too often inside my head. Thoughts and moreover good intentions are good, but thinking is not nearly as useful as doing.

I’m growing daily on the topic of growing up. I’m not as idealistic as I used to be, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on dreaming.

8/29/12

how uninformed, judgemental, and stiff I’ve always been. I don’t know if this is the lowest I have ever felt, but to classify the current state I am in doesn’t even matter to me. No doubt, these traits are definitely not something I want to forever characterize myself as. 

Though, in a grossly pleasant sense, I’m not glad that I am all this gunk, but I am glad to have recognized it at all. It makes me smile to have learned this much about myself, even if it isn’t pretty because I’ve gotten to know myself more and work on it sooner.

Side note

Yesterday, your girl attended a kickback.  I was the only sober one there (vodka jello shots do not count). ‘Twas ma deuxième partie avec quelques booze et j’ai pensé que le simple fait d’être dans une ambiance de fête me détendre, mais j’avais tort. Je voulais boire juste pour que je puisse avoir une excuse pour montrer mon vrai moi plutôt que de constamment surveillé et sécurisé. C’est pitoyable, mais tout ce que je voulais vraiment faire-les conversations que j’ai voulu avoir, le toucher, je voulais donner, je ne pouvais pas faire parce que j’étais moi-même il n’y avait donc aucune excuse pour tout abandonner. As naive and regretful as this may become in retrospect, I will say—it sucks being a sober prude.

I don’t ever want to go home. It’s a bold and slightly horrid thing to say but it’s the honest way I feel right now. I know that I won’t feel this way for any kind of wild blue yonder and I appreciate that because I’ll eventually miss home and time’s gonna fly by so very quickly and I’ll soon be home and then sad to leave again because the cycle goes on and on and o n.

Yet here in Davis, I willingly wake up at 6 and 7 AM. I look forward to starting the day. Normal stores are vast yellow grass fields and long UVA/UBA ray walks away. Rite Aid is closer than CVS is. We have to maintain our own mini homes. Shit is more expensive here, (laundry unfortunately included). Yes, I’m only comparing this to this recently past summer (though it’s still serious summer in Davis), all those complaints are weightless. The “love” for life I feel here, (I choose not to consider it love because I’m not very fond of that word so I’ll refer to it as) a boundless appetite for the sun to rise. This is a feeling I want to have always.

I like and don’t like to pause during the day and remind myself the days are going by and things won’t be this way for long. Our hair will thin, wrinkles and unfamilar colored spots and more stress will form. We won’t be as close as we are now and our optimism will surely fade. Or so they say? Still, if I were only to have this week of college to experience, that’d still be a nice memory.

Conclusion

You know, it’s a blessing and a sucky trait when you think so much about the seasons. May your god bless college. Salut.

I’m happy here at home and I’m leaving in less than a week. It is so clear to me the people who do not really care about me and more importantly those who do care (and I the same to both) and I have this summer before college to thank. Even so, this happiness at home is no doubt associated with a comfort. The past two days I’ve been trying not to really delve deep into the soon-to-be reality because the thoughts take such a sad spiral. I feel heartless because I think about the whole physically leaving loved ones behind aspect.

Still, I made a decision and this is part of it. College won’t be entirely dandy (the occasional homesickness for one). In retrospect, I don’t regret it.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Job Jugglers, on the Tightrope

WHEN someone asks Roger Fierro “What do you do?” — which he knows is shorthand for “Where do you work?” — he laughs. Then he says, “I do everything.”

Mr. Fierro, who is 26, has four jobs: working as a bilingual-curriculum specialist for the textbook publisher Pearson; handling estate sales and online marketing for a store that sells vintage items; setting up an online store for a custom piñata maker; and developing reality-show ideas for a production company. So far this month, he’s made about $1,800.

And here I thought I was the only one struggling with what I wanted to do with my life. Not that this article has solely to deal with that, but that more people are working multiple part-time jobs than people realize.

If you read the comments, contrasting with the featured 20 and 30- somethings, there are 50 and 60-something+ working multiple part-time jobs who will (retirement, a bleak thought) have to work until the day they die, another scary reality.

A comment that stuck out to me was by an Engineering graduate who makes over 50k starting? about how these people should have known the typical salaries they were heading into. True. And so maybe this is called growing up, or just being cynical but I don’t believe happiness should be the sole factor anymore. In fact, I think it’s rather selfish, of me.

Familar advice: Choose a career that you love,  but is it worth it if you are barely and I mean barely living paycheck to paycheck?  I truly used to think, “if I love what I do, that’s all that matters.” Then the reality of students loans, a mortgage, retirement, even kids — it all robbed and displaced my plans and I don’t know what the fuck to do anymore. Because nothing seems to measure up to “if it doesn’t pay the bills.” I know what it is like to have this kind of hard-living. I don’t want to go to college and be buried in thousands of student debt for a career that is basically just to pay off that debt. Then there’s one of many alternatives, a steady career that you don’t really love but puts food aplenty on the table for your children and spouse.  But that white-picket fence lifestyle has never appealed to me either. Decisions, decisions.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

edited Thursday, July, 7, 2011