Thursday, March 5, 2009
Trepidations
So, I have less than three months before I get my BA. And I have no fucking clue what I'm going to do after that. It's kind really scary. But also liberating. I have ideas of what I'd like to do, but I'm still in the dark as far as what I actually will do. In the best case scenario, I'd find a cheap place to live in Arcata (or Eureka if I really have to) and a job working for some local non-profit group like Democracy Unlimited, Green Wheels, Humboldt Domestic Violence Services, North Coast Rape Crisis Team, or something along those lines. Of course, the likelihood of that seems incredibly slim. I've been considering trying to get a local job with Americorps, but those don't start till fall, so I'd be possibly without a job over the summer, which is when I'll need one the most, as I won't have that much money to pay for my own place. And my mom keeps talking about how important it will be to not have a break in my health care (which ends when I'm not a student unless I pay a whole lot), otherwise any new health care I get through a job will not pay for pre-existing conditions or something like that. Then again, the real question is, do I really care? I plan on very likely going through many periods of unemployment through my life so that I can go on epic traveling adventures, live off the land, and do activism and such, and I probably won't have health care then. I love how our culture finds ways of trapping us into a life of constant employment and misery. And I'm still assuming I'll be able to find any sort of job in Humboldt to begin with. This place has a horrible job market. I recently found out that one of my former suite mates from the dorms, who graduated last year with a degree in sociology still hasn't found a job up here. If something like that happens, I might very well have to move back to Sacramento, probably with my mom for a while until I can get established. And even there, I doubt I'll find a great job. I'm thinking of maybe trying to go to Portland, but I've never even been there, and I have no idea how the job market is (I've heard it's not great, but I've also heard rent is cheap). Today, my former supervisor from the ESL center in Sacramento that I used to tutor at suggested I might want to get a job as an overseas ESL instructor. I looked into it a bit. I'm definitely qualified, and the jobs I looked at all seem to pay fairly well, and include free housing, a free ticket to and from the country, some level of health care, a decent amount of paid vacation, and even a stipend of one month's salary at the end of the (typically 12 month) commitment. I could definitely see myself doing something like that. But it would still only delay the inevitable need to get a "real" job eventually that I can settle down in (if I even want that). Americorps would be a similar issue. All these things are constantly in my head, floating around and worrying me. I can't wait to get out of school, but I'm really nervous about leaving the security it offers.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Ramblings
Ok, I'll be the first to say there is not going to be any clear structure to this post, beyond stream of consciousness writing. Got a problem with that? Don't read it.
Life is becoming more and more complex, and I find myself being pulled in too many different directions. On one hand, I have school, which is not something I want to be doing. I'm majoring in cultural anthropology and am only a little more than a semester away from graduating, yet I still wish I weren't going to school. The only reason I'm still here is to please my mother and to avoid having to pay her back the money she has conditionally given me (finish school, or pay it back). I've always loved learning, and still do, and I like learning about most of the things I'm learning about, but I just feel like it's a waste of my time. Sitting down and writing papers is just not my thing. I'm fine with going to class and participating in discussions, but I just can't deal with the structure of completing and turning in traditional assignments. I find it restrictive and uninspiring, and there are so many better things to be doing with my time.
And that's where things get complicated...I'm not doing much with my free time either. I've been spending every night hanging out at my friends' house drinking (not a lot, but still) and listening to music. Sure, it's fun and I enjoy the people I hang out with, but I can't help but feel that the house is a black hole, sucking away all the motivation and creativity of the people connected to it. I've become so complacent with this routine though, that doing anything else seems alien--including school work, which is a constant struggle for me to do. The only other place I seem to spend my time is in my room, wasting away on cyberspace (as I'm doing at this very moment).
I want to be more active, both socially and politically. Last year I spent lots of time socializing with different groups of people, meeting lots of new people, but now I seem to mainly hang out with only this one group of friends. I remember last year taking part in lots of political organizing, but this year, due to apathy, and personal issues that have torn apart the fledgling anarchist organization that was started in our area last year (turning many of the participants off from activism all together), I find myself putting less and less energy into organizing. I hope that when I graduate I will have more time and energy to devote to such things, but then I see my friends, who although they care greatly about these causes, spend their lives working and drinking, rarely breaking out of that pattern except to go to the occasional token protest.
I'm scared to death that I'll fall into this same pattern.
I also find myself getting more and more angry. I think my anger comes mainly from my frustration, itself a product of multiple sources: school, my mother, not feeling effective politically, not to mention my complete frustration with our entire world and way of life. I find myself directing this anger inappropriately, most recently at low level members of bureaucracies, which is neither effective nor kind. A few weeks ago it was the AIR Center, upone finding out that the person who had taken my petition for graduation had no idea what he was doing and may have lost my paper work, which means I now have to fill it out again, which requires me to track down my advisor, who is notoriously hard to contact, and it means that my petition is going to take even longer to be processed now. I cussed a bit, saying that is was bullshit and stormed off. I feel bad about that, although I never directed anything directly at the people (like saying "fuck you" or something), but still. And then today, upon finding out that the person who checked a reserve book out to me was wrong yesterday in saying I could renew it again today, I did the same thing, saying "that's bullshit" and "fuck this" storming off. I mean, I told her that I needed it to study for a test on Tuesday and that I had been told the day before that I could in fact renew it, and I told her I would have never even checked it out yesterday and would have just waited till today if I had known that, but her response was just "sorry, can't help you." I now wish I would have stayed calmer, asked to speak to a supervisor or something. But that's all too late now. I just find myself taking my anger out in not such great ways. I don't think I was like that much last year.
Along with the anger is depression, which comes and goes. I often find myself sitting around at my friends' house deep in contemplation, depressed and wishing everything would just go away. This depression stems from all the issues I've already elaborated on, as well as the lonileness I've been feeling recently. I feel like even among my friends, I don't really belong. Most of them have been friends for a long period of time, and I often feel like I'm out of the loop when it comes to inside jokes, even though I've known these people for over a year. And asking for clarification never gets me anywhere but brushed off. And seeing some of these people saying things behind the backs of people I thought were their friends makes me paranoid that I'm the person being talked about when I'm not around. This fear stems largely from my feelings of inadequacy, which I've battled sinced I was young due to the assholes who made my time in elementary and junior high a living hell by constantly harassing me. I was starting to get over that, and thought I pretty much was, but this year I've noticed those feelings creeping up more and more. I have one very good friend who I used to spend most of my time with last year, but now she is often busy doing other things and I rarely hang out with her like I used to. I no longer feel like I have anyone I can really go to at anytime and just hang out, and that is sad. At the same time, she felt the same way last year and now it seems like everything has reversed. She used to be the awkward one at parties and gatherings with people we didn't know, while I'd go try to make new friends, but this year everything is the opposite. I used to be the one with a lot of friends and could always find someone to hang out with, while she only had a handful and tended to stick to them, and now I'm the one only hanging out with a few people, and when they aren't around, I'm out of luck. And not having all these really great friendships, like the ones I see other people have, only reinforces my feelings of inadequacy, and feelings that most everyone secretly hates me, or worse, don't care about me (because at least if they hate me, they have some level of feelings towards me). Add onto the lack of great frienships, the fact that I've never in my life had a serious romantic relationship, and I have a recipe for emotional disaster. I mean, I figured after going to college and getting out of the house I'd be able to find someone who I thought was amazing, and who might feel similarly, but so far I've yet to have any luck. And it's frustrating because I'm less than a month away from turning 22, and 5 months from graduating from college, yet I've never been in a relationship lasting more than two or three weeks, and none of them have ever been even slightly serious. Everyone says that when you stop caring is when things get better, but it doesn't seem to help. It's hard for me to stop caring.
Oh, and I fell off my bike today. I've been doing that a lot lately (three times in as many weeks), which is weird as I never used to. I'm ok though, at least physically. Well, that's all I've got for now. Hopefully things start to look up.
Life is becoming more and more complex, and I find myself being pulled in too many different directions. On one hand, I have school, which is not something I want to be doing. I'm majoring in cultural anthropology and am only a little more than a semester away from graduating, yet I still wish I weren't going to school. The only reason I'm still here is to please my mother and to avoid having to pay her back the money she has conditionally given me (finish school, or pay it back). I've always loved learning, and still do, and I like learning about most of the things I'm learning about, but I just feel like it's a waste of my time. Sitting down and writing papers is just not my thing. I'm fine with going to class and participating in discussions, but I just can't deal with the structure of completing and turning in traditional assignments. I find it restrictive and uninspiring, and there are so many better things to be doing with my time.
And that's where things get complicated...I'm not doing much with my free time either. I've been spending every night hanging out at my friends' house drinking (not a lot, but still) and listening to music. Sure, it's fun and I enjoy the people I hang out with, but I can't help but feel that the house is a black hole, sucking away all the motivation and creativity of the people connected to it. I've become so complacent with this routine though, that doing anything else seems alien--including school work, which is a constant struggle for me to do. The only other place I seem to spend my time is in my room, wasting away on cyberspace (as I'm doing at this very moment).
I want to be more active, both socially and politically. Last year I spent lots of time socializing with different groups of people, meeting lots of new people, but now I seem to mainly hang out with only this one group of friends. I remember last year taking part in lots of political organizing, but this year, due to apathy, and personal issues that have torn apart the fledgling anarchist organization that was started in our area last year (turning many of the participants off from activism all together), I find myself putting less and less energy into organizing. I hope that when I graduate I will have more time and energy to devote to such things, but then I see my friends, who although they care greatly about these causes, spend their lives working and drinking, rarely breaking out of that pattern except to go to the occasional token protest.
I'm scared to death that I'll fall into this same pattern.
I also find myself getting more and more angry. I think my anger comes mainly from my frustration, itself a product of multiple sources: school, my mother, not feeling effective politically, not to mention my complete frustration with our entire world and way of life. I find myself directing this anger inappropriately, most recently at low level members of bureaucracies, which is neither effective nor kind. A few weeks ago it was the AIR Center, upone finding out that the person who had taken my petition for graduation had no idea what he was doing and may have lost my paper work, which means I now have to fill it out again, which requires me to track down my advisor, who is notoriously hard to contact, and it means that my petition is going to take even longer to be processed now. I cussed a bit, saying that is was bullshit and stormed off. I feel bad about that, although I never directed anything directly at the people (like saying "fuck you" or something), but still. And then today, upon finding out that the person who checked a reserve book out to me was wrong yesterday in saying I could renew it again today, I did the same thing, saying "that's bullshit" and "fuck this" storming off. I mean, I told her that I needed it to study for a test on Tuesday and that I had been told the day before that I could in fact renew it, and I told her I would have never even checked it out yesterday and would have just waited till today if I had known that, but her response was just "sorry, can't help you." I now wish I would have stayed calmer, asked to speak to a supervisor or something. But that's all too late now. I just find myself taking my anger out in not such great ways. I don't think I was like that much last year.
Along with the anger is depression, which comes and goes. I often find myself sitting around at my friends' house deep in contemplation, depressed and wishing everything would just go away. This depression stems from all the issues I've already elaborated on, as well as the lonileness I've been feeling recently. I feel like even among my friends, I don't really belong. Most of them have been friends for a long period of time, and I often feel like I'm out of the loop when it comes to inside jokes, even though I've known these people for over a year. And asking for clarification never gets me anywhere but brushed off. And seeing some of these people saying things behind the backs of people I thought were their friends makes me paranoid that I'm the person being talked about when I'm not around. This fear stems largely from my feelings of inadequacy, which I've battled sinced I was young due to the assholes who made my time in elementary and junior high a living hell by constantly harassing me. I was starting to get over that, and thought I pretty much was, but this year I've noticed those feelings creeping up more and more. I have one very good friend who I used to spend most of my time with last year, but now she is often busy doing other things and I rarely hang out with her like I used to. I no longer feel like I have anyone I can really go to at anytime and just hang out, and that is sad. At the same time, she felt the same way last year and now it seems like everything has reversed. She used to be the awkward one at parties and gatherings with people we didn't know, while I'd go try to make new friends, but this year everything is the opposite. I used to be the one with a lot of friends and could always find someone to hang out with, while she only had a handful and tended to stick to them, and now I'm the one only hanging out with a few people, and when they aren't around, I'm out of luck. And not having all these really great friendships, like the ones I see other people have, only reinforces my feelings of inadequacy, and feelings that most everyone secretly hates me, or worse, don't care about me (because at least if they hate me, they have some level of feelings towards me). Add onto the lack of great frienships, the fact that I've never in my life had a serious romantic relationship, and I have a recipe for emotional disaster. I mean, I figured after going to college and getting out of the house I'd be able to find someone who I thought was amazing, and who might feel similarly, but so far I've yet to have any luck. And it's frustrating because I'm less than a month away from turning 22, and 5 months from graduating from college, yet I've never been in a relationship lasting more than two or three weeks, and none of them have ever been even slightly serious. Everyone says that when you stop caring is when things get better, but it doesn't seem to help. It's hard for me to stop caring.
Oh, and I fell off my bike today. I've been doing that a lot lately (three times in as many weeks), which is weird as I never used to. I'm ok though, at least physically. Well, that's all I've got for now. Hopefully things start to look up.
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