A Pat on the Back: Still No Mussels Involved

Contributor: Paralith

No, trying mussels will not be an item on my list of accomplishments. A general reference to my improved eating habits, however, is on the list:

1. Eating better

No, I don't mean I'm on a diet. I've never needed a diet, as my weight has always followed the bottom curve (though I do think my fat:muscle ratio is slowly increasing these days ...), which is kind of surprising, considering that carbs was about the only food group I consistently partook of while growing up. I was a super picky eater, as City Girl and Speak Coffee can attest to. But nowadays, I actually eat fruits and vegetables. And I enjoy them. That's right. I like them, as well as a wide variety of international foods that would have sent me diving behind the pews when I was in high school. Though I still have my penchants, which my unwillingness to try mussels proves - as well as a lingering love of Pasta Roni, aka, a big pile of salty, buttery, oily, noodles. Mmmmmmmm. You don't know how much willpower it takes not to go crazy when they have a ten for $10 sale at the grocery store. Which they do. All the damn time.

The main cause of my new eating habits is my boyfriend. On our first date he cooked dinner for me. During a lull in the preparations he chopped up an orange and handed me a piece - something I'd never eaten before. That's right, I'd never eaten an actual orange before. But I panicked, and did my best to eat it as though it was the most normal thing possible for me to. And, surprise surprise, it was pretty tasty. Amazing, the power of love - or, the power of not being embarrassed in front of a cute and charming boy. That works too.

2. Reading more books

This was a habit I had in high school that I regret losing. I was an avid reader and it contributed enough to my vocabulary that I earned that dorky nickname of the "walking dictionary." But, then college happened, and though I did try here and there to continue recreational reading, it just wasn't happening. At least I was being educated, though. After I left college and entered my Lost Year my efforts at both recreational and educational reading were more or less nonexistent. My brain stagnated. But today I have a big list of books accumulated, most science related and some recreational, but I'm getting back into it, and I want to get into it with a vengeance. I've wasted so many hours of my life that I could have spent improving my knowledge in my chosen field of study, that I don't want to waste anymore. In the past week I've finished two books (finish being the key word here, as the first one was started several months ago....ahem), and I hope to keep the trend up. And, if I'm lucky, get an even dorkier nickname, like "walking monkey encyclopedia" ... or something.


I feel like I may continue to write small "pat on the back" entries as things in my life progress, hopefully along the lines that I want them to. I think it will give me more courage to also write about things that I don't enjoy talking about as much. Hey, and then I can list that in my next "pat on the back" entry! Haha, I'm just kidding. Kind of .

Pat on the back: quilt on the lap

Contributor: Speak Coffee

I'm going to give two even though I feel like the rest of the world won't put as much value on my accomplishments as I do.

1. I made a quilt.

It is the most tangible accomplishment I have since college graduation. I pieced it from scratch without a patter or guide book. Well, I used books as references for technique as well as the well of knowledge which my grandmother is on all things sewing. (She's addicted to Project Runway just like me.) Then I created the pattern that I would quilt into it all by myself, once again not using a pre-made pattern. I borrowed a quilt frame from my grandmother and spent three months hand stitching the quilting details into it.

Quilt top on the frame

Why quilt by hand? people ask me, thinking I've gone crazy. To immediately shut them up I tell them that you can't quilt on your average $200 sewing machine and that the cost of a machine that can handle the quilting is outrageous for someone who doesn't know when they'll ever get around to making a second quilt. Properly mollified, I tell them the real answer: it's tradition. The women of my family have been making quilts for generations, and always doing the quilting part by hand. You should see some of the beautiful things they've made over the years. Always with tiny squares (if your smallest piece of fabric is bigger than 4x4" finished you're made a "quick and simple" project according to them). Always with tiny, tiny, even stitches (mine aren't as tiny but, damnit, they're even!)

But I was also someone who felt like I had no heritage or traditions to claim as my own. Where I saw friends who had a religious or cultural tradition passed on to them by their families I felt I had no similar connection. This project has brought me closer to the women of my extended family and made me more connected to relatives I have never even met. My grandmother beams with pride. She tells my great-Aunt Joyce who bubbles with enthusiasm that one of the "young people" is taking it up. My grandmother even invoked the name of her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother, the woman who taught my grandmother how to quilt, to tell me how proud she would be too if she was still alive to see my little project.

(That last bit is a joke: my "little" project fits a queen or a king sized mattress ... which of course I don't have.)

2. I left law school

Most people would read that phrase as a failure, not an accomplishment. But the truth is that it would have been easier for me to stay in law school than it was for me to leave it. It would have been simple to keep plodding down a well worn rut, to do the numbered and tasks listed out in front of me with bulleted subtasks, to take the degree and become that person. It would have been easy. Not because the work load was light -- on the contrary it was enough to bury a person alive and the whole system was designed to bury you not help dig you out -- but because there was no risk involved.

I knew exactly what was coming. Sure there was anxiety when you took your seat in lecture hall. Would you get called on? Were your briefs good enough? Would the professor ride your ass if you messed up or would he graciously and embarrassingly move onto the next victim? But every single law student knew that if they could just pass the bar they would be a lawyer. There was a surety among these people that was eerie. They were people with Plans, and were not to be stopped by puny things like humor or outlandish statements.

Annoyingly, I was the only person whose humor did not involve either alcohol or Regan references.

When I walked away it felt right. It felt so right. Most of the students whom I was anxious about telling because I was certain I would receive further snubbery than I had already expressed their envy that I had a plan outside of the hell of law school. It was odd that my greatest acceptance was found in leaving.

I had attended the Kenyon Review Writer's Workshop the summer prior to starting law school. It was supposed to be one last huzzah. Instead, when the week long intensive workshop ended and on that night I gave my reading to the assembled group, it felt like coming home.

It took me another four months to realize that home was behind me and walking down the well worn rut to being an attorney would only take me further away not closer to the one place where my heart was.

Tougher than the GRE

Contributor: City Girl

This topic really has me stumped. I'm really good at bitching about life and complaining about the many many things I have done wrong since graduating, but I'm not so great at pin-pointing the things I'm proud of. The main problem comes from the fact that things I was proud of at the time have become things I now consider mistakes. For example, spending money that I would now very much like to have back in my bank account on the acting program I was in over the summer. I was super pscyhed to be accepted and thought I had totally kicked ass, but since returning to the city I realized that I no longer want to be an actor, so now I consider it a waste of time and money.

Oh, but there was that time when I...no wait.

Oh, but then I did start going to the gym and...nope, didn't do that either.

But I did start eating better and...nevermind, also didn't do that.

Um, I haven't had a cigarette in ten days. Does that count? I'm sure I'll break down again eventually, because I don't think there is such a thing as "quitting" for a smoker. For the time being I'm pretty happy with myself for holding out for this long, since it was part of my New Years resolution, but even thinking about how I'm proud of myself for not smoking makes me think of smoking and makes me want to light up.

I guess I'm pretty proud of myself for landing this internship, which I do like for the most part. I can't fully feel good about it for a few months when I find out if it really did lead to a job with a steady pay check and health insurance or if I'll be moving back home to live with my cats in my parents' basement, but for now I'm pretty happy about it.

I also think it's pretty cool that we said we were going to start a blog and we actually did. Go team!

Pat Yourself on the Back: I Think I Need an Upper.

So far I have carried the least weight on this blog when it comes to inspiring posts. While this may not be the most original of ideas, I think it will be fun for us.

A lot of our Lost Year revolves around failure - around those plans and ideas we had about Real Life that just went down the toilet. And, let's face it, it's not fun to write about your failures all the time. So tell me: what have you done, whether it be from the beginning of your Lost Year or from just earlier today, that you're proud of? That makes you feel accomplished? And I mean in even the tiniest, smallest of ways - or the big fat ways, if that's what floats your boat! (Floating....big and fat....oh, I'm awful.)

Write down as many things as you want, anything that you want - from "Ohmycrap I figured out what I want to do with my life!!!" to "I tried mussels today, and I didn't like them just like I knew I wouldn't (and I spit them all over the table) but dammit at least I tried them!"

Too bad I still haven't had the guts to try eating a mussel. Slime + food = just doesn't sound pleasant.

Graduation: And It's All Downhill From Here

Contributor: Paralith

May 6th, 2006

what a wonderful life now school is over!! happiness and joy!!

i get to sleep in, play video games, take time to make myself yummy foods, and to actually clean up the dishes every other day instead of once a week, cuz i have the time! but it won't last.

i'm actually still being fairly productive, getting things together for africa. i have my passport, i have my tickets, and now i just have to finish up the details of packing and getting ready. I leave MAY 17th, PLANE TAKEOFF 6:20 PM!!! so excited. and scared. very scared. but that's life.

plus, once i get back, i'm starting to work full time almost immediately. thanks to several strokes of good luck i will be able to work with Lili (basically same job i've had all year but full time) until the end of august, and while i work it will be time to study for the gre, look for grad schools, and look for DC jobs! and of course visit my wonderful bf while he's in DC as much as possible.

I think the opportunities for me in DC are actualy pretty good. I could work at a university, or if i get lucky, at the natural history museum, or the smithsonian's international zoo. how COOL would that be? and to live in DC? again, very scared, but very excited. so much to do! and i can't wait to do it.

also i've been updating on deviantart, like i said before. go! look! tell me i only kind of suck!!! xp
http://sapphira-reborn.deviantart.com

Ah, such optimism to precede such failure. GRE over the summer? Work at the zoo? Secure a job in less than three months? For someone who was so excited I sure took my sweet ass time accomplishing all my delightful tasks. Some of which I'd never accomplish at all.

Though I did continue to waste plenty of time browsing deviantart and trying to emulate the other artists there. I'm not bad, I know. But art is one of those things you really need to practice, to do all the time, if you really want to be good. Kind of like most skills in life. Except perhaps for riding the bike. But endurance while riding the bike - now that takes practice. And squeezes bike-riding into my generalization. Anyhow, should one spend hours and hours riding the bike and let the rest of their life stagnate? Probably not. Stupid bikes.

Graduation: ... Yeah, I Got Nuthin

Contributor: City Girl

So, inspired by Speak Coffee's reminiscient college pre-grad post, I looked up my own. (In the process I realized that I have been posting in my livejournal account since '03. The hell??? I feel like a total loser. I also went back and found some pretty depressing and angsty rants...but I digress.) So here is what I posted 4 days before I graduated from college:

It's official...I am done with all of my college work. In four days I will be a college graduate. Wow. Wierd. Then I will have to go out into the world and do adult stuff...like find a job. Yikes!

Fin. No really, that's the end. I do find it a hoot that I am still trying to figure out how to "do adult stuff...like find a job." And now I'm all nostalgic and shit. Maaaaannn.

Graduation: "Oh my shit!" is universal. It's adaptable.

Contributor: Speak Coffee
This post was written two years ago and has been taken from my journal to post here.
May xx, 2006 – 1:45 am

I graduate tomorrow.

They call my name. I walk across the stage. I get my diploma. And it's over. Four years is over. Oh my shit.

So tonight I got drunk on a bottle of wine. Went up to the roof with all my pledge sisters and we sat around in sweatshirts and jeans, drinking and talking all together one last time.

I really don't know what to do with myself.

The count down is over. Today, Sunday, is graduation. I've been counting this down for the past 79 days. That's the past semester, three months, fifteen weeks, something like that. Holy shit. I don't know what to do with myself. Thank god I have plans otherwise I would be in total rebellion mode.

Right now, if I didn't have plans, I would give the world a big middle finger. I would tell all of them to screw themselves and do something stupid. Something impractical. And by that I mean I would look, and look at travelling Europe while following my parents' advice to hunt for "real jobs." At least this way I get to make my own decisions. Sorta. At least I picked Chicago. The odd part about my plan for the next three years is that not all of me feels like I have to finish law school. If I decide in a year's time that this is not the shit for me I will move on, but I will still be in Chicago. I dunno. then again I really don't know what to do with myself.

I just had a rather scary thought. It crossed my mind as follows: I need to get myself together, get calm, get married. ... wow. that was a scary moment. I don't think like that. Ever. Maybe it's the wine talking. Maybe it's the graduation talking. Don't worry, folks, I'm not getting married. At least not any time soon. Even if I wanted to the two front runners have proved extremely inaccessable. And that doesn't count the younger men I've been seeing with the purpose of leaving them here when I graduate so that they won't talk about "getting serious." It's fabulous, really it is. Isn't. Whatever.

I don't really care about that.
This is not an emo entry.
This is a drunken entry.
So there.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I want two boys that I haven’t seen in forever. I don’t even know why I want them. What should I really be doing? I should be concentraiting on my weight and then on law school. And then I should be gone, concentraiting on life. But I’d rather concentrait this summer on relationships. Bastards. I won’t meet any here at my summer gig. What will Chicago hold for me? Lots of variety and very little selection of choice meats I bet. Fuck that shit. I need to get married. I need to get into a serious relationship. That’s what I should be looking for. That’s what’s expected of me. That’s what’s what. That’s what will make the world happy, and if it will make all those people happy then it has to have some modicrum of truth attached to it. Doesn’t it? Oh my shit. I don’t know what to do. Let’s face it.

There’s so much that I want. And I don’t know what to do to get it. I don’t know. I just don’t know. There’s material things that I want that I won’t get for three more years. So what? There’s emotional things that I won’t get for many more years than that because I’m too busy getting material things.

At one point tonight, while we were drinking on the front roof tonight, R------ whipped out her cell phone to drunk dial people. And I began to flip through my phone to find people to drunk dial as well. And I realized there are a lot of dangerous numbers in my phone. Like B----. A boy who doesn’t know I have his number. A boy I will probably never see again in person. We are fated never to be in the same palace at the same time. Woot. Who the hell cares about that? Maybe this is a sign that it’s about time that I’m done with all these Indiana-corn boys.

Bitch of the Week: More of a WTF of the Week

Contributor: City Girl

This post will be brief, but it depressed me enough that I thought it was worth noting.

Ah, facebook, what would I do without thee? How would I know which of my high school acquaintances that I haven't spoken to in five years is now with child without your endless wisdom? How would I know whether or not my friend Sam's relationship has finally come to an end for the umpteenth time? How would I know that the woman who hired me is, in fact, six months younger than I am and graduated from college a year after I did?

...

I realize that this is not of the norm. Fate has favored this girl, the company I work for is not that big, and she does have a tiny-yet-commanding presence that I will never be able to achieve. Even knowing what I know now I still view her as being about 10 years my senior, but in my soul of souls it depresses me that in the year I spent detouring in other activities (some of which could very well be considered of The Crazy) I could have been achieving real job status and would not now have to be addressing the pros and cons of living on Ramen Noodles for the forseeable future.

I think this ties into Speak Coffee's post about employers wanting vanilla. It's so true!!! They want vanilla starting with the path you choose to pursue in college. And the fact that I have now detoured from that path gets a big ol' WTF from most people I meet or interview with. Even interviewing for my current internship I was asked: "Are you SURE you no longer want to be an actress?" Yes, I'm SURE dammit! I'm sorry I wasn't born knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life and have instead detoured from my "path" in a myriad ways. Is it really that uncommon to not know what you really want to do in college? I think it was acceptable when I was in high school, but in the four years I was in college and beyond it has become...uncool? Geez, you really have to know EXACTLY what you want to do to get anywhere in this world. Or you have to be really good at pretending you know. Which is what I did to get hired at my internship. Which I love by the way.

Except for the fact that my superior is younger than me totally weirds me out and makes me feel even more certain that I wasted the last year of my life. People (ex: my mother) can tell you that you will have a use for whatever you learn, but in the real world (at least in NY) they don't care. They want you to know exactly what you want to do and be an expert in your area.

Good thing I took those acting classes in college or I would never know how to pretend to know what I want to do with my life.

Bitch of the Week: Land of the Morons

For my bitch of the week, I unabashedly choose the electricity company Pepco as my victim.

When my boyfriend and I first moved into our apartment in July, a few weeks after our move-in date we received one of those friendly "Intent to Disconnect" letters, as no one had come forward to accept responsibility for the electricity at our address. Fair enough. We called Pepco to sign up - and my boyfriend was already on the lists. Oh. Must have been a mistake. Letter sent out before the apartment building put our names in. Fine. We're even able to go to the Pepco website and create a convenient online file for our account.

A week later, we get another Intent to Disconnect Letter. Still, no one has come forward to accept responsibility. Um, yes, yes we have. So we must call Pepco again. Like most big service companies they have an irritating phone menu that you have to talk to, clearly and loudly and in a quiet room, before you get to actually talk to a person. When I do finally get to a person and explain my problem, after being on hold for a minute I'm told some interesting news - we had been given the wrong account number. The account for our address was actually under a different number that we were unaware of. Lovely.

But the person I talked to said she fixed everything, and that I just had to make a new file on the Pepco website for the new account number. I do so, and the intent to disconnect letters stopped coming. For a while. You see, four months later, we had yet to receive a single bill. Nothing in the mail, nothing in email for either of us, no payments due listed on the Pepco website. And we get another intent to disconnect letter for our truancy.

That's when I realized that, when signing on to our file on Pepco's website, the account number nicely displayed in the top right hand corner was still the old, wrong account number. Um, what the fuck? So again I'm on the phone to Pepco. The first person I get to says she can't help me, and sends me to another division. The people there say they can't help me either and that I have to go back to the first division and ask to talk to a manager. Back at the first division the woman I talk to is surprised that I asked for a manager, since she can help me herself. Makes me wish I could find that first person I talked to and strangle them.

After a long, arduous ordeal where we tried to get me into the right account, I was put on hold after which I was greeted with another surprise: the first time I set up an online file for the right account number, it didn't seem to stick. I had to re-register, from the beginning. Finally the online file works, and I make our overdue payment through the website. I make sure to sign up for paper bills, too. The intent to disconnect letters take a break.

The next two months, we receive our bills, I go to the website, I make the payments, and move on with life. It was holiday rush, we were crazy busy and spending money like mad, so I didn't realize that the money was not being taken out of my account. The third bill is, of course, accompanied by another intent to disconnect letter. I immediately go the website, see that the previous two payments were not listed as paid, and try to pay the whole thing. Another week later, another intent to disconnect letter.

AGAIN on the phone with Pepco. I get to a person and tell them my problem, and ask if there is any record of any of my attempts to make online payments. And of course, there isn't. Great. Now there isn't even proof that I've been effing trying to pay them but they won't take my money. I ask them if the fact that we had that previous mix-up with the wrong account number might be causing trouble, and I find out that our online file for that wrong account number is still active. Why didn't Pepco kill it last time I was on the phone with them? The woman tells me I have to close it out myself. Great. I go to the website, sign in to the old account (yes it's still there), and there's no clear way to kill it without potentially accidentally killing service to our apartment. I call Pepco again, and this time the person is like, Oh I'll inactivate the account for you. !!!!!! The first person said I had to do it!!!!!! *death*

I try, one more time, to make our payment through the website. No dice. The money stays in my account. I attempt to pay it over the phone, but they only take ATM cards and credit cards I don't have. Finally I decide to give up all my bank account info over the phone to make sure we can pay the damn bills before they cut out our service. And they don't even let me pay the full balance at once, just the overdue payments. Great.

So, days go by. The date by which our overdue payments are required to be in passes by. And the money still rests quietly in my account. At least now I have a confirmation number for my payment that the nice phone lady gave me, but I'm not taking any chances with these morons. I don't want our power cut off. I call them and they say the payment was listed as paid - days ago. I don't know how that works with the money still in my account, but fine. At last, today, the money gets taken.

Realizing that people as incompetent as those who work at Pepco are probably in charge of most of our basic necessities could be enough to make me paranoid. I still don't know why their damn website has ceased to work, so I'm just not going to bother using it anymore.

BitchFest ... it's like Oktoberfest only without the Lederhosen

Contributor: Speak Coffee

So about 72 hours ago I did a great bitch and moan regarding grad school program websites. Instead of reposting I LINK!

The rest of me just feels this need to accomplish something I can point to and show off. (Preferably something printed and bearing my name on the byline.) This is leading to a lot of wistful sighing I don't believe I've earned.

I hate looking for work. Hate the thought of working a crappy job that I'm smarter than simply because the economy sucks and my work experience is all over the board yet I really just want to do something completely different than the parts of the board I've already covered.

Employers don't seem like my 31 Flavors approach to the working world either.

Employers know they're hiring for a Vanilla position so they want to see Vanilla in your resume. They want you to pick Vanilla and stick to Vanilla. Lots and lots of Vanilla.

They say they like diversity of experience and that doing a little of this and that makes you a great candidate. But when it comes down to it, they really don't understand why you've handed them a resume that lists Black Cherry Swirl and Pralines 'n Cream and Gold Medal Ribbon when they just wanted to see mountains of Vanilla staring them in the face.

Then there's that awkward moment where I get to explain the writing thing. I could choose to gloss over it, but there's a time frame where I really did view myself as a full time writer even though I could gloss it over and say that I was just getting ready to move and then moving to start grad school.

There's the dreaded question have you had anything published?

Ug. Can we please go back to talking about that Black Cherry Swirl now? How about that Vanilla even?

What can you possibly answer to that?

No, but I won a local award that didn't come with publication. um ... that sounds like I started on Monday and gave up on Tuesday. Or No, but everyone thinks I'm great and it's just a matter of time. Yeah, that's not my ego talking that's someon else's that I would have had to have borrowed for the interview. Besides it's pompous. And I don't do pompous, I do spunky. Or I'm trying to break into a very difficult and specific market. Maybe if it wasn't for the fact that it sounds like I'm trying to make myself aloof.

How about answering with the truth that I thought I had my life figured out and those months didn't matter in the big picture so I didn't work then for any place that took out taxes. But I didn't have my life figured out, and I still don't, but I'm working on it, and if you give me a job I will continue to work on figuring it out while showing up on time everyday. And I won't do drugs on the job. I'll even pee into a little cup to prove it.

Anybody else feel demeaned by jobs that require drug tests? I do! Can't most of us tell these things anyway? And if you can't, why not just fire the person because they're not doing their work like a normal employer would?

Bitch of the Week

Thankfully, Speak Coffee has been on top of things enough to provide us with prompts, without which this blog would currently be nothing more than a title and a few profiles. Call this a prompt if you will, but after deliberation with my fellow contributors I am introducing a new aspect of this blog (I just couldn't wait). So, welcome to "Bitch of the Week." This is open to any topic of your choosing, so long as it's something that is really getting under your skin and you just need to rant about. I'm fairly certain we can all come up with at least one thing a week that is ticking us off and we need to get off our chests, so let us share our thoughts.

Culture Shock: Civilization At Last

Contributor: City Girl

There are several places on this planet that I have no desire to ever live. Wyoming comes to mind, more than likely because I have a tendency to forget it's really a state. If there is someone from Wyoming reading this post I apologize, but I find the chances so slim that I won't worry too much about causing offense.

As my chosen pen name suggests, I am a city girl. I wasn't raised in the biggest of cities this side of the Pacific (or this side of the Atlantic for that matter), but I did grow up in a decent sized town with a lot of diversity -- not just culturally, religiously, and racially, but also in number of piercings, tatoos, and multi-colored hair. I consider myself pretty lucky in that respect. In a way it made me naive because I just kind of assumed that the rest of the world was as laid-back and creative and accepting and, well, weird as my home town.

Then I went to college.

The first time I saw my college campus I cried. It was raining and the campus is a hideous cement mess. There is a whole lotta ugly going on in western Mass despite the countryside. Well, I sucked it up and went there anyway. And I had a great time. And after four years I had never been so ready to pack up and leave a place as I was rural Massachusetts. A place where springtime is synonymous with the scent of cows wafting on the breeze.

I stayed for my last summer after I graduated in a run-down house because I had landed my first two paid acting gigs with a local Shakespeare festival. Then I peaced outta there.

When I first came to New York City to move in with my best friend from college I felt like my own theme song was following me around the city. You know, here I am, it's the first day of the rest of my life, that sort of thing. I had never felt so alive as when I was in the middle of Manhattan. I knew this was going to be the case because I had visited several times before as well as done a summer school program at The New School, and the feeling of exhiliration is still the same.

Sometimes I'm walking down the street and I forget where I am for a bit. I'm pensive and anxious about work, about men (my personal favorite cause of drama), about bills, about life, and I forget that I'm in the middle of the city that I wanted to live in more than any other in the world. Then I have to stop for a minute and look up at the buildings and lights and remind myself where I am. Yes, I wanted to move here and I really am here. And I love the people and the lights and the craziness of it all. I love the rush. I stop, and look around and I smile.

And then some guy pushes past me, elbowing me in the side, and yells: "Move, you crazy bitch!"

Yes, I realize, I really am home.

Culture Shock: Finally Something New

Contributor: Paralith

I've tried to write this entry several times. There's a lot of complicated issues surrounding where I lived, when I lived there, and why, but in the end, the best way to answer the prompt is by describing this: I wanted out of my parent's house, and it was a battle to get to that point.

I could blame many things for my difficulty in really getting out into the world. I lived in the town I was born in for 22 years, never living more than 20 minutes away from my parents' house, and never traveling anywhere beyond our four usual family vacation spots. But in the end, if I had really, truly wanted to get out earlier, none of these things should have stopped me. Instead, they contributed to my biggest anchor - my own fear.

"These things" that I keep referring to - well, it's definitely a big can of worms. Many of them revolve around my much loved but anxious and controlling mother, and the death of my father from cancer several years ago. But these are big, big issues - ones I could write so much about, that this entry would never end. So I will leave them, I think, for another time.

So we'll start at my final semester in undergrad. I had long wanted to escape from my parents' house and dependency on mother, but I was also deeply insecure about my ability to make it on my own. I was afraid to go out on my own. I didn't want to admit it then, and blamed it largely on my mother - but it's the truth. I hadn't lived in her house since the summer after my sophomore year, but I still was never farther away than 20 minutes.

At the time, I worked as a research assistant in one of the labs in my school's zoology department. My particular lab was in a part of the building not open to public, where not many other students went, at the end of a long hallway, down a stairwell and through several doors into the basement. And one day, coming back from that basement lab, I found a flyer taped on one of the doors - on the side of the door facing the basement. Where almost nobody goes.

The flyer was for a month-long study abroad trip - the Behavioral Ecology of African Mammals, to Kenya. It wasn't even through my school but through a neighboring college. The Q&A and sign up meeting date had already passed by a week. After that day, I never saw the flyer again. I don't know how it got there or who put it there, but I knew I wanted to go.

Keep in mind, I had never been out of the US before. I had never traveled anywhere for longer than a week before. I had never traveled with anyone besides my family or close friends, let alone 30 strangers from a different school. I both wanted to go, and was scared out of my mind about what could happen if I actually managed to get over all the obstacles in my way and actually get to go. But, it had been a long time coming. I got in contact with the coordinators, had a long discussion with my mother about it, and finally, I went.

It was an amazing experience, and I loved it. But what happened there wasn't as important as what I learned about myself - I really could do these things. I could handle them. I could handle them well. And it made me realize how little I really knew of the world, and how much I wanted to see more of it.

When I got back from that trip, I was hopping to leave my hometown. I was ready to get out. To just stay there, where I had always been, where there was nothing new or different - the idea was simply sickening.

When I did finally leave, and move to a big city 11 hours away from home, it was exhilarating. It was like breathing fresh. It sounds corny, I know, but if there was any culture shock, it was lost in my happiness to finally be somewhere different, and to not be afraid of it.

Of course, as time went on, I had to learn the difference between visiting someplace new, and actually making a life for myself, by myself. That was where the real shock came in. And that's the subject of another entry.

Culture Shock: It's Too Quiet Here

Contributor: Speak Coffee

I’ve spent the majority of my time since leaving college waiting to go to grad school. Waiting to hear back about housing. Deferring. Re-applying. Waiting to hear back from the school. Prepping to move. Going and realizing I didn’t want to be in that grad program. Applying to new grad program. Waiting. All this means long stretches of time when I’m not making a stellar income. And a non-stellar income means moving back in with the rents.

Despite what people may think about the 20-something mooching carelessly off his parents and living the good life, it is not so. I resent that I have to move back in. It is the last thing that I wanted to do. I hate being dependent. It is its own breed of self-esteem drain to know that the world does not consider you useful enough to employ to the point where you can pay your own rent and bills and eat at the same time.

And whatever you do, once you realize you can’t live on your own do not rent Failure to Launch like I did. Oops.

I had lived in a sorority for the three years leading up to graduation. That meant that I shared a building with 30-60 women on any given day. But unlike a dorm we didn’t lock our doors and didn’t close them unless studying or sleeping. In fact, no one had a key to lock her room with. There were constantly people around, making noise, talking, gossiping, being playful, helping, doing cartwheels in the hallway, doing something. The hardest thing about living there was finding ways to be alone when I needed to chill. But after a year I had found all the nooks and crannies in the building where people were unlikely to go and also developed a sign system. If I had to finish a paper I’d leave a Do Not Disturb until 4pm I’m Writing a Paper (Exceptions Made for Fires) sign on my door. It worked wonders. And then sometime around 6pm people would creep back in and ask me how the paper went, which was really nice of them.

Moving back in with the parental unit? It was quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. There was no noise. No sound. I could hear when the furnace clicked on. There was no one to talk to save the parental unit and that was only between when parental unit got home from work until bed. This meant there was no one to talk to after 11pm on most nights. And it was just the parental unit. No one else. No variety. No noise. No music. No cartwheels.

I escaped regularly to someplace, anyplace, with people in it. Coffee shops and bookstores were my favorites because you could stay there for hours and hours and no one gave a damn. Also no one looked at you weird when the only thing you bought was one small brewed coffee. At the bookstores, no one even expected that of you.

These places had what I craved: people!

Okay, so they were people I didn’t know. And I generally didn’t have great gossipy conversations with them, didn’t chat, didn’t console or comfort any of them. Actually I found it remarkable when I exchanged more than a dozen words with anyone person. But that was okay. I talked to some people at work for longer periods even though I didn’t consider any of them friends. And I could always phone someone from college. Still, being on the phone with them wasn’t the same as having noise and action and color surrounding me.

I still do it sometimes. Even when I had roommates and classes again I’d stride out into the world as much to get away from the roommates as to see and feel and hear something different than my climate controlled box living.

My roommates from that point ... well, that is an entire post of its own.

Culture Shock: Moving Away from College

Call for commentary:

What was it like moving away from college? Leaving campus for the first time in four years without expecting to go back must be akin to the feeling you would have if you were moving to Europe or Asia without knowing when, if ever, you would come back.

Where were you going? Did you want to go there or was it decided for you? Was it what you expected? Did your parents fight you on it? Was cost a shock? Was the neighborhood a shock? Did your roommate make you homicidal? Suicidal? Or just want to never come home again?

Share your trials, tribulations or expectations met or gone awry.

The Plan: Process of Elimination

Contributor: Speak Coffee

I have no idea how old I was when I first got the question. But I know it came from my father’s friends from work. They’d always ask me if I wanted to do what my father did. Hands down: no. It never even crossed my mind. Scratch one item off my list: no biology.

In first grade I said I wanted to be a teacher, when really I just meant that I wanted to be Mrs. Dalghren. I kept saying this through third grade, when really I just wanted to be Mrs. Lake. Then somewhere in middle school I stopped having really cool teachers, or at least teachers that I thought the moon rose and sat for. That and I started babysitting whereby I learned that I do not have patience for children in large doses. Scratch two off my list.

I went to college to get a “practical” degree. I was good with computers and had taken a couple programming classes in high school. So here I was armed with my basic HTML, a little C++ and Visual Basic (Does anybody still use VB? Because I thought I was pretty hot stuff in that class and no one ever seemed to be able to tell me what to do with that skill) and I was thinking that I’d take all these classes, graduate, and be this awesome webpage designer. Except my college C++ class was the most illogical thing ever. I only passed the first semester because I had already learned the material in a much more step by step, intuitive method previously. The second semester was taught in a little hole in the basement classroom with no windows, few lights, and an instructor who’s voice would have put me to sleep even if the material wasn’t sonorous. It was the only final exam, the only test period, that I have ever failed.

Semester ended, I took my passing D+ and wrote an evaluation that read “this class made me want to be an English major.”

It would be another semester before I made good on that threat.

I thought I’d try something else that also seemed practical: Communications. Oh, think all the wonderful things that communications encompasses. Speech writers, radio DJs, newscasters, magazine editors ... and all the students who could get into those classes might have become any of those things. I was not such a student. My registration lottery number sucked. Well scratch comm. off my list.

Then I thought I’d go to law school and do all these non-law things with the degree. Politics maybe? But it turns out I didn’t like law students or the things that attorneys did as attorneys. Mostly I just wanted to tell the legislators I saw on c-span that they were being stupid and have the credentials to make them sit down and shut up.

Some things never crossed my mind. Playing the tuba was one of them.

My point is that I was doing this whole planning for the future thing by process of elimination. Same as the test taking technique they teach you to use when you don’t know which answer to bubble in.

My problem is that there are too many bubbles to choose from. And my method is not equipped to deal with the outside pressure of a) parents, b) relations, c) people I meet who want to know what I “do” and most importantly d) that little voice inside me that agrees with all of these people that I’m useless and worthless unless I successfully “do” something worthwhile.

That voice turned up the volume my junior year of college. That’s when all my senior friends made plans for their lives that started the day after graduation that didn’t include classes.

When my own senior year rolled around, students from my writing seminar asked me what I was going to do when I graduated. I told them law school. “Really?” they all asked. “You don’t want to be a writer?” I told them glibly that I also wanted to eat.

Stupid me.

It was all the pressure of the Plan. Not only did I think I had to have one, I thought I had to have a good one. Assuming writer did not equal food I equated it with a bad Plan. Lawyer equaled food and money left over for shelter therefore good Plan. Despite the fact that my father repeatedly told me to find something that I loved, my own happiness never factored into my Plan. I just knew that I could be an attorney, that I was capable of doing the work and the schooling because I excelled at difficult but logical things.

Scratch that Plan off the list.

"I Have a Plan"

Contributor: City Girl

No, I don't really. I just like saying that because it brings back fond memories of when my best friend in college said "I have a plan" and it usually pertained to shopping, mixing amazing drinks, or getting into a variety of trouble of the most delicious kind.

Ok, enough digression. Back to the topic at hand. You see, I did have a plan. It really didn't take formation until I left high school to go to college, but it was the college I went to that decided me. I wouldn't exactly say I believe in fate, but I do believe in your options determining the outcome of your life in a very big way. I was accepted to two colleges (painful to admit, but I've never been an honor student, let's be honest) one for English, and one for Theatre. Since I didn't want to live out in the corn for four years, I opted to come out east. And with that, my fate was sealed. I couldn't make up my mind as to what I wanted to do when I left college, so I applied to the strongest fields in my areas of interest at the colleges I wanted to go to. I was accepted into the theatre department at the school I decided on and, voila! Instant plan.

Don't get me wrong. It's not like I looked through a book and was like "hmm...careers, careers...actress, perhaps?" I did really, truly, love acting and the theatre. I still do. I've been on stage since I was 7 years old, and I love the spotlight, the drama, the beauty, the passion...you get the idea. So that was it. I was set on being an actress. I made the decision (much to my parents' grief I assume) that I was going to move to New York City after I graduated to grace the stage with my presence.

So I did. I moved to New York. And then I was like "wow, this is like, hard and shit." No, no, I actually never said that. But I wanted to. My least favorite question went from: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" (As a side note, why don't I get that question anymore? I don't care how old I am. I certainly do not feel grown up, and I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do) to "WOW, you want to be an actress?? How do you DO that?" Um. I dunno. I go to auditions and then they love me and then they put me in a show and then I get an agent and then I make it big and then you see my name in lights I guess. My actual response to this annoyingly recurring question: "I'll let you know when I figure it out." Another all time favorite: "WOW, you want to be an actress? That's SO HARD!" Oh em gee. Really? I had no idea. Waiting for three hours in the pouring rain to audition for a walk on role really did not make that fact sink in. Nor did my mind-numbingly brief, yet much too long, stint working in women's lingerie to pay the rent.

I think my train of thought is getting away from me, so I'll regroup.

Plans I have had from age 5-present:

Actress (recurring)
Teacher (age 8 when I was a huge teacher's pet before I realized I can't stand kids)
Veterinarian (also age 8, before I realized I might have to put cute cats to sleep)
Gene Therapist (I still think this idea is totally cool, but it lasted for all of five minutes)
Therapist (to follow somewhat in my very successful older sister's shoes)
Lawyer (recurring throughout high school, dropped much to my grandfather's disappointement)
Publicist (most recent)

I'm sure there are more, but the theme is clear enough. It's supposed to be ok to waver a bit on the plan when you are in elementary school and your parents think it's oh-so-cute that you want to fly to the moon. Then reality sets in and it is much less cute.

I could ramble on about this for quite a while, about whether I chose acting because it was the one thing I really felt I was good at or because I had come so far I didn't want to let people down by dropping the idea, or about how I am only now just starting to get an idea of what might possibly make me happy for more than five minutes. No, I think I will wait for future entries to delve into that general confusion.

"I have a plan," sounded so much better when it involved buying cute shoes.

The Plan: "... and he became a dentist!"

Contributor: Paralith

When I was in first grade, I said I wanted to be a botanist. Then I found out that a botanist studies plants and that the word I was looking for was zoologist. Then I said I wanted to be a zoologist. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be so confident in my career choice again for more than 15 years.

My first clear memory of the pressure of the Plan comes from my sixth grade home room teacher. He stood next to his desk one day and told us about an old student of his, who had some generic name like Jack. As he spoke, my teacher punctuated every sentence with a wave of his hand.

“Jack always wanted to be a dentist. When people asked him when he was little what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said he wanted to be a dentist. When they asked him in middle school, he said he wanted to be a dentist. When they asked him in high school, he said he wanted to be a dentist. And guess what? He became a dentist!”

I’m sure my teacher then went on to talk about the importance of knowing what you want to be when you grow up, but this is the only part I really remember. And all I could think was, “Well – what if I don’t want to be a dentist? What if I don’t know what I want to be yet?”

My next memory is from one of my eighth grade teachers, a statesman-like elderly black man. He liked to teach us things about the mind and about learning, and would demonstrate from his own books how he would highlight pertinent passages and write notes in the margins. And he was, of course, a fervent supporter of the Plan. He liked to use the word goal. He told us we needed to have goals, to think about them, write them down, plan them out. It sounded like a good idea. Only I didn’t have any goals. And it seemed increasingly important that I find some.

I had been playing piano since I was in elementary school, but in high school I switched to a new teacher. She was a happy, gentle woman, who was quietly but fiercely passionate about the things she loved. She loved children, teaching, her husband, and of course, music. She also had some interesting ideas about spiritual healing, and believed herself to have healed a sick child she passed on the street one day with invisible beams that came out of her eyes. But, in spite of that, she was overall an inspirational woman, and I enjoyed learning from her.

Though she never used words like plan or goal, she still espoused a version of the Plan nonetheless. She told me one day, in her quietly-on-fire voice, how desperately important it was that I follow my passions in life. “Do what you love,” she told me. That was how she found happiness in life, and she wanted the same for me. Her words were lovely and true – but they scared me all the more. I didn’t have any passions. I was a dorky fourteen year old, just trying to keep up my grade point average and maneuver the social morass of high school despite my braces and big bug-eyed glasses. But now I found out that I was also an empty, passion-less person. I could think of nothing that I could heartily and happily embrace for the rest of my life. What was wrong with me? As you may guess, the fact that I was also in full angsty-teenager mode at the time didn’t help matters.

High school continued, and teacher after teacher made their speeches about preparedness, about goals, about the Plan. I became quite bitter about my lack of a Plan. In our junior year English class, we read the play Death of a Salesman, and I got into an argument with another kid in my class about Biff – the 34 year old son of Willy the salesman, who had yet to “find himself” and start a career. “He should have done something by now,” my fellow student said disdainfully. “Oh?” I asked tersely. “Does life have a schedule now? There are rules for when and what you have to have accomplished?”

The argument continued right up until the end of class. “He could have done so many things by now!” the kid objected as the bell rang. “He could have become a doctor!”

“What if you don’t want to be a doctor?” I said as I slung on my backpack, barely keeping the snap out of my voice.

“Why wouldn’t you want to be a doctor?” he said to my back as I walked to the door. “You would be helping people!”

“Well maybe I don’t want to help people!” I said, and walked out of the room.

To this day I’m still pretty bitter when I hear about the Plan. I understand its usefulness when it comes to being prepared for your future career, but I don’t think it should be shoved down your throat from the time you’re eleven. It wasn’t until the end of my junior year in college that my own Plan finally began to take shape in my mind, that I began to feel some of that passion that my piano teacher talked about. And even though I knew grad school was in my future, it wasn’t until a few months ago that I really began to narrow down and define my research interests.

I could write a whole other essay on exactly why it took me so long to find my own Plan, but I think that point is that I am not Jack, a fourteen year old girl is not a fifty year old piano teacher, Biff is not Willy. We’re all different – I know, it’s a hackneyed phrase, but I think its something that my teachers still failed to grasp when it came to preaching about the Plan. Their speeches made me dread the future, not look forward to it.

What do you want to be when you grow up? The pressure of having a Plan.

Call for commentary:

No one has ever gotten away from the "what do you want to be?" question. The only difference is when it turned from idle question into nagging reminder that your life was, as of yet, unfulfilled and you weren't on the Right Track to have a really good Plan.

There's a fabulous quote from the poet James Tate from an essay he wrote on poets/poetry and where his poetic originated:

As a child I was exasperated by the question: 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' Here you are, six years old, you know, trying to put together this little model airplane, and they say, 'What are you going to be?' I just wanted to say, 'I'm going to be seven. Next year I'm going to be eight. Leave me alone ... Whatever it is I'm going to be, let it be a surprise. Or I'd rather be nothing at all. And if you keep asking me this I'm probably just going to be a guy who avoids interviews.'

"The question persisted, but at the age of seven I started getting cagey and hit on an answer that got these people off my back. I told them I was going to be a writer, and that silenced them right away. And I went back to kicking my pet squirrel."

The question we pose: When did "what do you want to be?" go from friendly question to crazy, impossible, unbearable pressure?

The Name: City Girl

Totally self-explanatory. I tried to be all creative and witty, but the inspiration just wasn't coming. So now I am City Girl aka Single and Fabulous in New York. If you want to dig a little deeper into my psyche I will say that as it pertains to The Lost Year, moving to New York City was probably the beginning of when I started to feel so lost in life, even though it was what I wanted for years. The city and I have a love/hate relationship. But it's ok. I'm a bit of a masochist.