An agitated post

I wrote this earlier today and I considered not posting it. But I felt that it was honest and it was definitely cathartic, and I'm feeling brave so I'm posting it. Just remember, I am probably PMSing and I wrote this from a very vulnerable place.

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I have decided that if I am chosen for the job up North for this summer, I will take it. I don't really want to, but I don't have many other options for jobs this summer and the stipend will pay enough for me to have the month of August to do with as I please. (See Fram, I do take advice sometimes, I just find it difficult to do when I have already decided that the world should be a different way.) Maybe I'll go to the mountains in August. I don't know yet. If I have a good attitude about the work, I'm sure that the job will be just fine.

Yesterday's post led me to cry today. I know what is sensible. I know what I "should" do. But I also know what I want to do and what I feel deeply dissatisfied about with my current life. I watched my dad go to a job that he hated every day for 25 years. I don't want to do that. He did it for me and my brother and my mom, but I don't have the responsibilities he had. I'm 28 years old and time just flies past me. I would swear that I was just 25 last year and I feel like I've made very little progress in the meanwhile because I keep shoving myself back into a mold that I don't really fit into. I cried today for the same reason that I cried when I talked to dad about finishing my degree. All of this time and money that I've spent, and it's not what I want. It's a damn shame, but I don't want this degree at all. I was happier working as a cook. I was happier as a cashier in a bookstore or the hardware store. At least then my time was my own. Christ, even just writing about it right now is making me cry again. I feel like I have to finish it for everyone else who has helped me along the way. I feel like I have to finish it before I can move on to what I really want to do because otherwise it's going to keep coming up, rearing it's ugly, unfinished head until I slay the beast.

Partly, I'm upset because I've become the family joke. Most of the day on Saturday at grandma's party I kept getting the jokes: "Yeah, Ang, so when are you going to finish?" "Do you think that you'll finish before [your cousin who started college this year]?" I know that the jests, at least in my family, are a way of smoothing over something that might otherwise be an awkward issue and a way of pointing out that I belong. (Teasing is the currency of love.) But man, they really started to sting after about the 4th or 5th time. And some of the jabs that my mother made crossed the line. And granted, I am a petulant brat by nature, and I don't take even imagined slights very well, but when I'm already struggling with the fact that I don't really want to be where I am, it really makes me just want to quit. Sometimes I want to tell her to keep her damn money if she's going to complain to everyone about helping me out. Half of the time I feel like her expectations and pride that I'm going to finish are the only things that keep me going anyway.

I can't really say that I never wanted or even don't want a degree, I do want it to a certain degree. But it's more along the lines that I wish I had never started. I wish that I could have had the confidence that I can learn on my own then that I do now, and I wish I would have been able to see that you have to really soul-search and figure out what you want to do rather than just what you can do and what makes the most money.

I don't want to demonize my mother either. She is just a much more pragmatic and scientifically/economically minded person than myself. She is creative, but within limits, and she always feels good about doing the logical thing. I don't. Some of the most illogical things I've done in my life have turned out to be the most rewarding.

My grandfather died eight years ago and it was hard on everyone. He had lung cancer and decided that if it was his time to go, it was his time to go and died in his own bed within months of the diagnosis. He inspired everyone who knew him and was a big part of my life. It's from him that I get my love of learning and my ability to pick up a book, or an instrument, or anything I like and learn how to use it. It's from him that I don't have any fear of trying new things. The last time my mom and I had a heart to heart, she said, "Your grandpa always worried about you. I think he saw that you were good at so many things that your challenge in life would be to figure out what you wanted to do." And that's exactly it. I have so many options, that I can never figure out what I want.

It sounds like bragging, but it's fucking torture. I watch my brother and my cousins work it out, or just do whatever it is they are trained to do, and I can never seem to figure it out for myself.

And then there is the whiney princess in me that refuses to do anything that I don't want to do. I have wondered if my problem is that I am just whiney and lazy, but seriously, I doubt that that is the entire case. I do work hard at things, I just want to work hard at something that I find fulfilling. And I really don't think that that is too much to ask.

Anyone who made it this far in this post deserves a drink (or a smoke, or one of whatever your choice vice is), and thanks for listening.

Oh, and Fram? Your comment yesterday did spur this post, but I do want to say thank you for your kind advice. It is good advice, and I take it in the spirit that it was offered. And who knows, when the time comes, I might even follow it. It is more a reflection of myself and where I currently am emotionally that I got upset than anything you said, so please don't feel that I am angry with you in any way. I am far more thankful that you inspired me to think about these things.