I made a mini park out of aluminum foil. It has a mini park bench, a mini trash can with a lid, and a very well sculpted tree that sticks up straight in the air and kinda looks like a silver paper towel rack. It’s all prettily situated on a flat 2 by 2 inch square of foil. I’d include a photo for you, but I smashed my old phone that had an operating camera with an internet connection on it.
I’d say I need a hobby, but I already have that whole “Ukulele” playing thing. That just doesn’t work when everybody else is asleep. I should probably be asleep.
…I watched a movie on Netflix, a cheap independent like film with actual musicians playing their songs, and pretty much I realized how unattainable that dream is. I just want to play music. With people.
I think I want to start a band.
But I’m in Grad school.
Because I’ll make money doing that. It’s more realistic. Plus there’s health insurance.
I write sentence fragments, I’m sorry, I apologize. It’s not a good sign for my future as an English teacher, but I’m adopting that Once you Master a language you can totally mess it up any way you like theory…Which doesn’t exactly go like that, but the gist of it is: I think I know how to write a complete sentence, and so I can write sentence fragments when I want to (and when I am not teaching).
I don’t want to teach. I’m scared of failure. I’m scared of planning. I’m scared of how boring and miserable it is going to be and the amount of energy and effort and time and my life I’ll have to put into it…and I’m scared I’m going to hate it and it’s going to drain away my life and happiness and make me question why I ever made the choices that led me to it in the first place.
I’m scared because that’s pretty much how I feel about grad school. Except, I’m doing well in grad school, in the classes I end up taking anyway, and I actually get to leave the house this way, and see people on a weekly basis, and feel like I have an excuse for my existence…Like I’m making progress toward a goal that everyone accepts, like I’m trying for something and I will be a useful member of society.
I want to be a useful member of society.
But I also want to be happy. Does one get both? Does it depend? Does it depend upon what makes me happy?
Like, if having food and shelter and a way to pay back student loans and cover future medical expenses makes me happy, then I can get that…can I also get the part that enjoys life too?
This is probably unfair of me. These are just the stupid emotional feelings I get when I watch someone living out the dream that I have not accomplished, and I see how happy I want to be based off what they are doing, and I become irrationally blinded to the positives of whatever I am working toward because all I can see is what I am not doing and what I would rather be doing… And I present everything in a one-sided view. But I have to get the negatives out, to see the worst of the situation, to figure out if it is really that bad.
I don’t know if it’s really that bad. I’ve survived 7 months of my plan to actually earn a real income…and actually try to do something that people respect…that I know I can probably do…That will be a lot of work and time and pretty much my life because I don’t have anything else…I survived 7 months of it, and I don’t know if it’s worth keeping up or not.
I spent my entire life with a plan, I knew what I was doing from grade school up to college. Through my first three years of college I was sticking with that plan, to study English literature, and study things I liked in general, get my bachelors, and then go get my credentials and be a teacher…That was my plan.
Summer of my senior year of college kind of shook me up.
I had intense surgery and it scared me and it hurt me, and now I don’t want to live my life following that set plan.
The easy dependable plan that I had, which didn’t turn out being so easy or dependable. I just feel trapped by my own abilities and where my future seems to be headed and I probably just shouldn’t worry so much, but I haven’t figured out what I’m doing and it scares me.
So I watched Netflix with my brother and made a mini aluminum foil park.
Apparently I look like a teenager. I don’t see how this is possible, given that I’m like, 5″10 and I feel like my height alone would make people guess I’m ancient, because according to my niece, age is connected to height. I guess some people have advanced past the thoughts of a five year old, because some recent acquaintance of mine was astonished when they found out we were in the same year of school.
It was kind of funny, he was all chatting on, talking about high school like I was an underling, “Oh yea, I graduated in –this year– ” and after a short pause I was like, “me too!” and he was all “What? I thought you were like, WAAAAY younger than me.” “Uh no…Nope…I’m –this random age that I might have said I was at some point but I’m just going to be vague for the sake of torturing you, while I told him my real age-” And he stared at me in bewilderment.
I don’t know what was so bewildering. I mean, the age that he guessed I was was hardly three years younger than my actual age. Three years isn’t a super big age gap. Unless he thought I was barely the age and he was only guessing it because it’s the legal drinking age and I’ve played music in bars a couple times? Do I really look like I’m a teenager like my brother-in-law said once?
Maybe because I don’t wear make-up?
I saw one of my friends from grade school this year and she said I looked exactly the same, just like I did 10 years ago.
So, I’ve either hit the fountain of youth without knowing it, or people just think I look like a baby because of my face and the fact that I don’t wear makeup. It might be the not wearing makeup thing.
I don’t know. I’m just thinking about it…while I should be asleep, because even if I look like a teenager, I feel like an ancient being.
Oh the irony of having arthritic hips that were once compared to a 70 year old’s, and looking like I’m in high school.
I should go eat some more omega-3 fatty acids.