Stop contemplating, start celebrating...

I think I might be in the process of actually making a decision. A not-questionable decision. A not-falling-into-it, actually-making-it-happen decision. I can't tell for sure, but maybe I'm actually taking charge of something for once.

I know. I'm as mystified as you are.

I don't want to spend three years studying to become a teacher when I don't even know if I want to be a teacher. I don't want to spend three years and a lot of money qualifying for something that you really have to love and be committed to if you're going to be any good at it. I don't want to make this decision without a little more background information. I don't want to start on such a shaky foundation without considering all my other options.

So I'm going to take five months and weigh up my options. I guess it'll really be more like three months, but that's two more months than I've had in the last three years to think about anything. Three months with no school, to figure out what I want to do next. I didn't look at anything, really, when I was thinking about schools before. I didn't visit any campuses, I didn't sit in on any classes. I didn't look into scholarships or programs or what credits transferred. I flew blind, for the most part. It's really fucking hard to commit yourself to figuring out the best possible academic and future career plan for yourself when you're taking a full course load and working three jobs. When you get thrown in at the deep end, with no American high school diploma, no citizenship, no SAT score, and not even a vague memory of what a guidance counselor might have said once upon a time back in the day, it's even harder. I'm not throwing up my hands and saying, poor little me, it's all too hard, I can't cope, I'm dropping out, wah wah wahhhh... I worried that if I took some time off, that's how I'd feel. I'd be one of those waffling twenty-somethings who wastes their time and potential and pisses everyone off by never committing to anything. I'm going to finish my bachelor's degree sooner or later. I'm graduating with my associate's in a month. Between August and October (the deadline for applying for Spring classes), I am not going to sit on my ass and eat bonbons and cry about my life...well, I might do that once in a while, but mostly, I'm going to use this time to figure out what to do next.


This is my plan. I have a plan. I am a person who never has a plan, and now I have one. A plan to make a plan. Knowledge of the things I'll need or where to get them. Time set aside to make this plan. Hah...I guess that whole plan, means, time set thing doesn't just apply to wanting to kill yourself. You're more likely to actually do something if you've actually got it all mapped out. 


Check back with me in a month, invisible readers. If I've actually got this shit done, you'd better send me a singing card and one of those edible bouquets, or I'm going to be pissed.

We Don't Need No Education

I just cannot bring myself to pretend to half-assedly care about convergent boundaries and plate tectonics any more. The ridiculous charade of a science class that I am taking this summer is chipping away at what little faith I have left in the absurdist theater piece known as higher education. Did I just use two similes in one sentence? I do believe I did. Good thing no-one's grading this, I might run the risk of getting a less than perfect score and have to feel terrible about myself.

Seriously, though, school fucking sucks. I am taking a science class and a music class because they are the last two things I need to get my associate's, and neither one is worth my time and energy, nor the paper I waste taking notes and drawing cartoons of people driving pencils into their eyeballs. There's just No Point to any of it.

I know enough about music to appreciate it. Six goddam years of piano lessons, three of music theory, and four of high school music class including band, choir, and percussion ensemble means I know all any average non-musician person needs to know about music. I wonder if I can test out of the class. I bet I can't. I bet that's something I would have needed to know about six months before even signing up for the stupid fucking class.

A college degree is nothing more than a glorified mix of a receipt and a certificate of attendance. It really, truly doesn't matter if you learn anything or not. It doesn't matter whether or not you retain any of the pap that you cram into your brain so that you can regurgitate it on command. All you have to do is show up, make some semblance of effort, do what you're told, and pass a predetermined selection of classes, preferably in a four year period. I have never met anyone and thought, good gracious, they're clever, I wonder what their college GPA was? Nor have I ever met anyone who struck me as dull and inept and thought, gee whillikers, I bet this one doesn't have a nice shiny degree hanging on their wall. Why the fuck do we care? At what point did we decide that people could only possess intelligence if they went tens of thousands of dollars into debt to acquire tangible proof of it?

Iphy, y u no bring the lolz?

I seem to have this magical superpower that involves putting people to sleep. I'm writing this tonight because I was supposed to hang out with Forthright but he passed out on the couch while we were watching a movie before heading to the bar. This happened the last time we hung out, also. Dys always seems to be asleep when I am in the house, and this is not just because I keep coming home in the small hours. I scampered through the front door mid-afternoon the other day and she was out cold with all the lights on and an audiobook playing. Things start going pretty far south with Beta, my ex-ex, because he would head off to the land of nod instead of talking, fucking, fighting, or doing anything with me, really. Ten Hut seems to have developed narcolepsy since he started dating me, too.
At first I worried that I might be incredibly boring. Pshaw. Clearly, this is my X-man mutant power at work. Fear me, callow humans. I have come to destroy your puny circadian rhythms!

I'm back at school for the summer semester. This college degree business is beginning to seem like a convenient excuse never to learn anything new or feign interest in subjects and issues that don't immediately grab your attention post graduation. Four years of forced reading and cramming is pretty much guaranteed to sour a person on any sort of knowledge acquisition. Once you have your degree, assuming you can find some kind of gainful employment that doesn't demand the same, you are free to spend the rest of your life watching reality TV and shopping for stylish yet affordable patio furniture. You've proved that you can consume information and regurgitate it at appropriate intervals. You have a nice little piece of paper as solid evidence of this. No one is ever going to test you anything ever again, so you may feel free to become as lazy and stupid as you like.

I have to say, I'm quite looking forward to that.

Lately, I've been idly toying with the idea of dying alone. I don't mean I'm going to go and live in a cave and go all Henry David Thoreau on your asses. It's just beginning to seem as if the whole marriage / lifelong partnership deal isn't ever going to come my way. At first this filled me with a sense of dread and failure, but I've been mulling it over and my perspective has shifted somewhat. Barring any unforeseen wacky hi-jinx, my life from here on out could pretty much go two ways. I could get my degree, go to grad school, and get some sort of real job. Or I could get my degree, go back to performing full time, and figure it out from there. Neither of those options are contingent on someone else being a part of my life. I can make bad decisions, miss deadlines, second-guess myself, and somehow get things more or less done with or without someone taking up more than their fair share of the bed and getting mad when I show up late to dinner.

I had some concerns regarding the breeding issue. It generally seems be a two-person sort of job, one that needs to take place before a woman reaches a certain age if she doesn't want to spend a bunch of money or have a euphemistically "special" baby. Although it pains me to admit it, I was starting to worry that I might not meet someone who wanted to go along with my crazy plan to pass on my DNA, much less someone who might like to stick around to mould and shape the drooling offspring into an actual functioning human. Quelle horreur! Fulfilling my societally-prescribed life role may be beyond my grasp! To hell with all that. I can raise a kid on my own. Judging by my track record of relationships, the poor creature will probably have a better chance that way. I believe I'll adopt a baby when I'm forty or so, if I don't get around to popping one out sometime before then. By that time I should have some sort of security hashed out, financial and otherwise, so the baby dealers will pretty much have to dig one up for me, right?

I am addicted to memebase.com. I don't know if that makes me hip and with it, or just incredibly lame.

I've also developed an incredibly disgusting habit of picking my nose when I'm by myself and no one can see me. I can say with a certain degree of confidence that this does not make me hip and with it.