Monday, October 15, 2012

Why I'm not getting along with University

Firstly, no I haven't forgotten; I simply didn't want to do it. But I am now, so problem solved. I've been doing these stupid blog posts for Digital BS 101 and so I've been avoiding it. So hello again. Again.
Secondly, prepare yourself for a bitch-fest. It's not REALLY a bitch-fest, but it's so long, it might as well be.

You know, I’ve worked really, really hard to get here. I spent two nights a month out late getting tutoring, test prep, college course prep, all that fun junk in high school—which, I assure you, is so much harder than it sounds. I’ve got over 1000 hours of community service, given up so many Saturdays for college visits and to tutor and filled out so. many. applications. I’ve done interviews and focus groups and mock-ups and career fairs and spent long nights doing homework, writing perfect papers, reading garbage, writing stupid discussion prompts and mock imitations, listened to stupid professors and smart professors who were boring as hell, given myself ulcers over GPA, money, homework, tests, papers, class, work and forgotten to eat for days and still not lost a bit of weight. I’ve learned to lie about how much I can’t stand myself, how much I can’t stand my life and how much I want to just cuss out the whole bloody world for a bit. I’m here. And I’m tired.
I always thought college was made for people like me—people who like to learn new things and talk about what they learned and bounce ideas off each other and read and write and… I didn’t think I would be happy just going to work at a fast food place or a factory or something. And I still think that. But I am so tired. Honestly, I just want to quit for a while. Not necessarily forever, but just for a while. Hell, MAYBE forever. And why can’t I?
I wonder what I would have done if I hadn’t had so many people telling me I had to go to college. I mean, my mother… I wonder just what would happen, what I would do, if I didn’t have to answer to my mother…
Do you think I’d quit?
I mean, I’m not going to quit obviously. I’m just too damn close to quit now. But would I have come if I hadn’t had all those people I would have disappointed otherwise? Would I have? I kind of don’t think so… I think I would have taken some classes, learned to paint maybe. I love to paint, but let’s face it: I suck at it. I would have taken some classes, and MAYBE I MIGHT have gotten a degree anyway, but would I have done it like this?
No.
For example, I wouldn’t live here. I’d live with him, or at home, but probably with him. I’d only have class two days a week. I’d work at a pet shop maybe, or at the post office or the library or the car dealership where my dad’s friend let me work that one Tuesday. It would be simple. When I was at work, I’d do my work, and when I was home, I‘d be home. No freaking out over papers and spending every spare moment reading something I’m not even remotely interested in. I’d read what I wanted and I’d join a book club so I’d have someone to tell it about. I’d spend a few hours doing homework, just a few, and it would be good homework. I’d paint. I’d figure draw. I’d get frustrated as hell, because like I said, I suck at it, but I wouldn’t care, why should I? My transcript wouldn’t mean anything. No more “permanent record” to hold over my head, you bastards. Just letter grades that disappeared as soon as I got them, good or bad.
I could write whatever I wanted. I would join a writer’s club and workshop with them. I’d make my own writer’s club to workshop with. I’d plant some flowers in a window box and hang it outside. I’d plant herbs in a window box outside the kitchen that I’d hardly even know how to cook with. I’d watch TV and movies and play videogames with my boyfriend and not have to stress out about the paper I should be writing or the crap I have a test on that I haven’t read yet or the fucking cumulative exam at the end of the semester filled to brimming with garbage I haven’t even looked at yet and it’s halfway over.
I could just snuggle up on the couch with him, curled up in a blanket and watch a movie and go to bed without having to set a six thirty alarm every day and I could just ENJOY it. Do you have any idea how log it’s been since I just enjoyed what I was doing right then at that moment without worrying about something I had to get done for this damn degree? I don’t. I mean even in high school, I was prepping for this. And high school sucked all on its own.
I feel like…this is going to sound hippy dippy as hell but here goes:
I feel like I spent my whole childhood being forced to go to school so I could go to college so I could get a job so I could keep the wheels of economy turning. I feel like I’ve been—am being—wasted by the “system.” Why does it come down to this? Why are our live so damn boring? I mean this is the plan, right?
Born>K-12>Work Force>Retirement/Disability>Dead
Or                  >College Degree>Work Force>Retirement/Disability>Dead
You see how that can get boring?
Then there are those few people who get to do things differently, either because they are born privileged/pretty, get privileged, or something happens like they manage to publish a shit book or something. Or they’re Bill freaking Gates and they get filthy rich by working out of their garage.
Something.
But I’m not going to be one of those people. I mean let’s face it, I’m a small town girl from Alabama who’s, at best, mediocre at a lot of things and not really good at a single one. That “other life” isn’t in the cards for me. So can’t I at least, AT LEAST, do this crap thing MY way? Can’t I do that? Can’t I spend my years doing what I want when I want without having to answer to anybody. It’s not like I want to commit a crime, it’s not like I want to be a bum—although, hey, if someone offered me a private beach on which to bum, I wouldn’t say no. I just want to DO things. I want to travel. I want to go to England and Ireland and Mexico and the Ituri. I want to fake smoke. I want to go to an aquarium. I want to own a bookstore. I want to get married. I want to have my own house with flowers and two dogs and no stinking white picket fence. I want to make things and write things and ENJOY things. I want to be able to drive without having a panic attack. I want to feed ducks. I want to paint things. I want to have a one-night stand (pre-marriage, of course). I want to fucking line dance in a cowboy bar!
I don’t want to die. Really, if I could avoid it, I would. But if I’m going to die, which I am because I have to, then I want to spend the time I have doing what I want, not killing myself over something that doesn’t mean as much to me as I thought it would.
I want to take a break. I want to rest. Maybe, I want to quit.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Another Blog

Oh no, don't look at me like that. It's not my fault. Professor Distracting is teaching a course on digital rhetoric and part of our assignment is "create a blog and post about subjects relevant to our class." So...yah.
But I don't want any of them reading this. This is me. Real me. Well, as real as an online identity can be I suppose. Or maybe not even that real. I guess it all depends. Anyway, I don't want them all seeing me, so I cheated. Made a whole new google, a whole new account, a whole new blog not at all associated with "this" me. With me. Way to hit the bricks, girl.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

All Moved In

I'm fine with it now but class starts Monday and I'm already stressed about that but somebody liked the joke I wrote on my whiteboard outside my door. So that made me feel good. Wanna hear it? (Hindu's, you might not be amused)....
What do you call a cow with no legs?
Ground beef.
Badum-Cha!
:)

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Blowing in Holes in Smoke


I'm....bored....with life. It's pointless.
What do we do?
We wake up, go to work, sit in a desk, go home, eat, go to sleep.
Oh! The weekend! We wake up, go watch TV, eat, go to sleep.
We "relax." We have "fun days" that we spend buying things, clothes, make-up, furniture, which we use to "decorate" things. Our houses, our kids, ourselves. Maybe we go to a movie or a zoo, we watch other things do things, or we watch other things eat, sleep and go to the bathroom. We do this for seventy years then we die.
Wow. Life is amazing, huh?

Am I the only person who isn't content with this? Is there ANYBODY out there who wants more from being alive?
But honestly, what more is there?
I'm just fucking bored.
Bored isn't a great word, but it's the best I got.
Even with God (if you go for that bit), what's the best he does to spice things up? Send you somewhere hot where you just talk more about him then the average person. At most, you go to jail, get tortured and die early. Not exactly what I'm aiming for here.
God doesn't change this boring existence very much, if at all.

The reason I put this little thought bomb on this blog instead of my other one is because it's just one more thing that I'm looking for answers to that I can't find.

I'm bored with the ways of this life, but what else is there to even search for?

If you're out there, say something. Tell me I'm not the only person who just wants more than this.

A Hiding Day

But there's nowhere, really, to hide from anything.
I'm starting to hate her all over again. Because everything I ever wanted, worked for, cried over, is being placed in front of me and just handed to someone else, someone who hasn't worked for it, who doesn't even really care, who takes it all for granted.
And I feel helpless over it. And I hate that.

Monday, August 20, 2012

I'm Back...

Ok, no I haven't forgotten about this thing. In fact, I've thought about it practically every day and then I get kind of angry and decide I don't want to do it. I don't know why but I just really have been avoiding this. I made myself write in my other one though so I think it's about time I wrote in this one. That's what its here for.
Basically, I want to go back to Belize. That kind of ticks me off. I mean I was there for ten days. I didn't really meet anybody who hasn't been involved with the church in some way (although, let me tell you, that doesn't make them perfect). I mean what right do I have to miss a place that I have no real connection with? None. But it's like there is this connection. And it makes me mad. It's silly that I feel this way so I'm mad and it's silly that I'm mad too so I don't know.
Obviously, it's not just the place I miss. But I don't want to talk about that either. That's even more stupid. And you know what's terribly ironic?! This...thing that I miss so much is exactly the thing I prayed for so fervently before... well before a lot of stuff. And then there you go! And now, not only am I not in the position to have it, I'm not even good enough to take it if I could. I can't decide if it's cruel to set something like that in front of me or if its supposed to be an encouragement.
Regardless, that's how I feel about that. I want to go back with all my might. I want to go back. I want to be there. It's not that I don't want to be here... I mean I don't particularly want to be here. The politics there are crazy but to me, it's...it's like that's the place I've been dreaming of all this time. I'd miss PEOPLE here, but nothing else. I wouldn't miss the weather, I wouldn't miss escalators or shopping malls or places like Disney Land. But I miss Belize.

Other than that insanity, my family is another fall apart session. When "the girl" bailed out on all of us, it's not that she was so crucial to our family; it's just that it made sides and now a certain other member of our family feels like they should take hers. But the thing is, I don't have a side, I never made anyone choose. But this certain member has always been...a problem and now it's just getting worse and another member, instead of acting like a husband AND a father, is just acting like an idiot and my mother, is of course, not helping herself by her behavior. In short, it's just a mess. But yah, that's what I've been avoiding. So there you go.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Changes

So I just got back from a mission trip with my church last night. I have, by the way, since pledged to change some of my speech habits simply because they children I tried to teach deserve more than who I have become. Anyway, bottom line is I am now the most confused I have ever been about God and a few other things that I don't want to talk about yet...if ever...online. I'm having one of those moments where I stupidly wish everything would magically work out and everyone involved would be happy and....I don't know what I think could ever possibly happen to make all this stuff ok.
I'll tell you what though. Cried when they dropped us off at the airport, collected myself after a few minutes and lasted till the plane ride almost three hours later, cried through the take off and beginning of that flight, my pastor and friend tried to distract me with a card game, but I just couldn't get into it, kept myself together through the rest of the plane ride and the three hours in the next airport but when that flight took off, I fell to pieces and cried the whole way to the final airport.