blast to the past

A long, long time ago, I was a freshman in college. I was so excited to load up my explorer and move into the dorms with 2 random roommates. My whole life fit into a few boxes and and would be cramped up in the room that was in Reid Hall (the only dorm I saw on campus back during Preview that I said looked sad and dingy). I learned to love living in that tiny space.
I enjoyed the little accomplishments that came with living "on my own" for the first time. For example, I remember the first time I realized I had run out of clean clothes. I sat down on the dorm floor and tried desperately to remember my mom's laundry words of wisdom. My much more experienced roommate, Maggie, looked at me laughingly and asked, "Had I really never done my own laundry?!" And seriously, apart from moving clothes from washer to dryer, the laundry world was an unknown land of mystery to me. "Is an orange gator shirt a dark or a light?" "Do I have to do something special to keep my bras in good shape?" "How do you wash a striped shirt?".
I remember how excited I was when I could claim that I had used an entire tube of toothpaste from start to finish, all by myself ! I loved doing my own laundry, pretending I could cook in the dorm kitchen, using my own toothpaste and running off at all hours of the night to get ice cream at the union.
My roommate taught me much more than which clothes were dark and which were light. She taught me the beauty of wearing a thong, sat with me during my first beers (on her birthday) and showed me how to put make-up on. Before college, the only alcohol I'd ever had was the wine at church.
I remember dreaming of law school and how I would dress fashionably beautiful and impress the jury and judges and win lots of cases. I figured out which classes I had to go to and which I could skip and still pass. I did crosswords with Rachel during Calc 2 lecture and paid highly focused attention during TA class.
Somewehere between the 5 apartments and 12 roommates I had during my college years, law school lept out of the picture, the ideas teaching, nursing and motherhood crept in and out and then I graduated. I lost the explorer (to a relatively harmless incident with lots of speed and a gaurd rail on I-175) and switched to a more sensible car that would take me into the years after college and could suit the needs of the possiblity of children. There was a period between my junior and senior year when I realized that I was doing it all way! too! fast! I met a boy and we fell in love. I took off for Australia for a couple of months to slow the pace of college and the impending graduation that carried with it an enormous amount of pressure.

I am now sitting in my 5th apartment in the same city. I am elbow deep in disapppointment with the career path I am stumbling on now. Working the front desk at the hotel was easy enough, the Alligator was fun but stressful, I loved working at the chocolate store, and then I was ready to move on. I always assumed I would just have a fabulous job that would pay me lots of money and I would be extremely happy. Turns out, I am happy but simultaneously dissatisfied. I still enjoy doing laundry, and now I share my tubes of toothpaste with my ultra sweet boyfriend. I still wear thongs and have developed a strong obsession with shoes and purses. I drink very occassionaly. I wish I had more friends or was at least better at keeping up with the small handful of friends I do have.
I was looking at some pictures from someone's facebook (a site that is addicting and somehow marks either the level or lack of achievement I've cultivated vs what other people my age are doing) and I came across a picture of a friend who went to grad school and moved to Texas to be with the man she loved right after. She went to school for elementary education and got a job right smack in the thick of exactly what she wanted to do. She was sitting in between a huge group of fourth graders with a huge smile on her face, saying how much she loved her kids. I thought to myself, "I could do that". Laney just got a fairly decent paying job as a high school english teacher, Marcy works at high school in gainesville teaching. Other English majors did it, why can't I? Frankly, I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid I will discover I don't like it, the way I discovered I didn't like banking and the way I'm finding I don't much care for being a secretary.
Do I really want to invest more time and more money into an education only to find that I'm not really sure I want to take my life in that direction shortly after entering that career field? There isn't really a fabulous wardrobe associated with being an elementary school teacher, pumps are almost flat out of the question. The idea of dealing with parents freaks me out. Yet, I always, always find myself toying with the idea of teaching.
Reading the Wonderful Lie has really got me thinking about what I really want to do and wondering how long it will take to get to the point of knowing. The only thing that so far seems to be working out is the fact that I am still in love.

Babies can wait. Thank you.

I have been toying with the idea of not having babies for a couple of months now. It was mostly caused by the fact that kids have those breakdown moments of screaming, crying, kicking, punching and overall brattiness all because they have to go to bed, horror of all horrors. Thanks to my baby-sitting years, I have put down many a child; sometimes they screamed as I tried to gently explain to them that I would love for them to go to sleep and tell me all about their dreams the next day. For the most part, it was easy to stay mostly calm as the child I was baby-sitting for screamed and wailed in my face. This calmness rested firmly on the fact that I could leave the child in his or her parents care at the end of the night. It's easy to like a kid when you get to return it. I am truly afraid to have children.

The thing that scares me the most about having kids is that one day, there will be a very real person who will go from depending upon me and my husband for everything, to challenging every word that comes out of my mouth, to spitting my mistakes in rearing them in my face, to asking me for money and material things, and then might walk away from me, as I did to my parents, thinking that I know nothing about what it's like to be young. Yeah, yeah, I know there are many upsides to having children, i.e. macaroni Christmas ornaments, beautiful childish laughter and smiles, the possibility of a grandchild (who I can return at the end of the day), and many other things that I have yet to experience.

But think with me for a second about what married life could be like without a little person that I would have to raise. I could take after Miss Carrie Bradshaw and throw an "I'm not having a baby shower." (Carrie made a wedding registry when she claimed to have married herself). I could still get presents, I would even register for things for my husband (no need to be excessively selfish). I wouldn't spend countless dollars on diapers, clothes that take all of 3 weeks to grow out of, pounds of food, education and who knows what else. I wouldn't lose my jet black hair to worry and anxiety on what the little person is doing or will do or won't do, only to be replaced by non-flattering, dull grays.
There will be no issue of baptism or whose turn it is to feed the baby or who is going to be the bad guy.

Maybe one day my opinion on this matter will change. Tonight, babies can wait a long while more before they can become part of my plan for the future (because that plan was going so well to begin with....or not).

Anyway, go see Knocked Up. It's hilarious.

Random thought

So I was thinking today about my position in the office. Not my position, as in I’m a secretary position, but as in I am in glass window-ed office right off the elevators. If someone were to come into the building, some crazy, doctor-hating patient, I would be the first one to go. The crazy person would come off the elevator and shoot the first person he sees. Yeah, that first dead person would be me.

Anyone wanna buy me a bullet proof vest?

"It's a wonderful lie"

My books arrived in the mail today! I have been dying to get out of the Science fiction series that has had my attention for the last 2.5 years. It's a 13 or so book series, it's thrilling, it's suspenseful, it's a fun read. BUT, I am ready for something girly, that isn't a trashy romance novel. I found this: "It's a Wonderful Lie--26 Truths about life in your twenties" edited by Emily Franklin.

In the forward, I found the reason I believe will make me finish the book in record time. The "Quarterlife Crisis" - "[It is] not the idle whining of a coddled, presumptuous post-adolescent. It is the response to reaching the turning point between young adulthood and adulthood: it is the amalgamtion of doubt, confusion and fear that comes with facing an overwhelming set of identity issues and societal expectations at once." It's all about these women with big dreams of what their great college education would do for them, great job, great place, great boyfriend, great fashion and greatness in general. The truth is, there are so many of us graduates these days, and such lower salaries for starting out, that we can't afford these great things, we have to work so much and so hard we don't have time for the great relationship and our parents are hounding us hard to be great, the pressure of getting there is exponential not only from society, but from our selves. To those precious few, those already achieving greatness, how did you do it?

Some of the chapter titles/categories of twentysomething life (or beliefs we had about our twenties) include "I'll have an amazing apt and love my job", "I'll know myself and know what I want", and "I'll be where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm meant to be doing". This isn't one of those self-help books, it's written sex & the city style, with stories practically pulled from several different twentysomething diaries.

When I joined the real world of working, I thought working at the bank was going to be a fantastic job with great opportunities. I had this big dreams of a fantastic wardrobe, great pay and promotions. Well, the salary didn't supply enough for the great wardrobe and the boring work did lead to any motivation for working toward that horribly boring looking promotion. I knew as soon as I got in there that I wanted out. I researched all of the necessary steps to becoming a teacher or a nurse. I considered grad school, I considered marriage, babies and no job. And then, I ended up in the Dept. of Urology and am still very seriously considering all of the above. The point? Life after college, is just that, my life...after college. Going back to school would give me somewhere between 1-4 years of stalling time.
I'm looking forward to reading the stories of how other women, other twentysomethings, dealt with the excitment and disappointment of being twentysomething.

she paints?

My first artworks:

The flash takes away from the darkness of the brown, but you get the picture.

weekends

There is nothing more I'd rather do tomorrow than go to the pool, sunbathe and swim around lazily. There is nothing less I'd rather do tomorrow than go to my rather unsatisfying job and grind away at the day.

This weekend was absolutely exhausting. The sun was overwhelmingly hot and I ate so poorly, I have nearly given up on losing weight. Work tomorrow does not make for an exciting thing to get up for.

I have lacked any motivation to actually go to work these days. I am learning a crap load about Microsoft programs, various office machines, and general secretarial stuff. It's challenging in the sense that I'm finding out about all this stuff I had no idea how to work before, but it's sadly unsatisfying because it gets me nowhere in terms of a solid, respectable career. Not that there is anything wrong with being a secretary, I just pictured much bigger things for my life after college.

So, in an effort to make the rest of my life more satisfying, I picked up a few crafty-type hobbies. For the first time in my life, I made some real paintings. I picked some colors, bought canvas and brushes and went to town. I sat down for several hours and painted. After some tries, I actually ended up with something I liked. I framed them and will be putting my 2 new pieces of artwork on the wall sometime this week. With these 2 pictures on the wall, I will have set the theme for my bedroom. Once Ryan's parents clear out all their belongings from our apartment, I am diving into some serious nesting. I have stylish organizational storage, a general color scheme for each room and big dreams of a very chic apartment.

bedtime.

horoscopes

Occasionaly, just for kicks, I check out my horoscope at jacksonville.com. Today it said, "Conditions at work still unstable. Don't lean on anyone and don't say very much." I have felt like that a lot here. I have tried to keep a short tongue at work when it comes to most situations, but there are just times when I want to vent and get it out of my system. Fortunately, Ryan listens to most of my crap and my mom does too. I get very different responses from both of them, so it's fun to talk about it. Ryan says, "punch them in the neck." My mom says, "Pray for them and I'll pray for you." I always envision myself punching them in the neck after I pray for them.

insomnia and our ups and downs

Dear Insomnia,

I hate you.

love,
jenn*



Once again, it is well past my bedtime and I am still awake. weee! Laney and I spent the evening at the theater, literally, the entire evening. We got there at 7:20 and left at 12:40. First, we watched Mr. Brooks.

I went along for the ride, watching Mr. Brooks. I hadn't seen any previews b/c Ryan screens out the scary stuff so that I can fall asleep easier and not have nightmares once I do fall alseep. Well, I had really no idea what it was about and I was certainly shocked when I found out. There were many gun shot wounds and more blood than I was prepared for. The story and the commentary from the people around me kept me firmly rooted in my seat. It was quite the movie experience. The gore made Laney feel ill, and left uncomfortable images for me to relive in my nightmares, so we decided to watch yet another movie.

Enter Georgia Rule. In this case, I had seen previews, but they give nothing away as to what the movie is actually about. There were several points in the movie where I thought "Hmmm, I really don't know where this one is going.." Unlike in Mr. Brooks where I felt like it wasn't quite dead giveaways, but I definitely knew where things were going. In Mr. Brooks, as you solved one thing correctly, the director threw in a twist, that was delightfully surprising (minus the bullets & blood).

All in all, it was a good night. If only I could just go to sleep.