Between being beaten up at work, coming home and falling asleep at 6 pm only to wake up at 1:30AM WHEN I HAVE TO BE UP AT 5:50 TOMORROW TO DO IT AGAIN, the job overall, and the fact that people I thought were friends won’t talk to me because of a third party’s petty stupidity, and I’ve pretty much had it with this town and with these people and with this job and with the whole rat race in general.

I’m about one psychotic break away from packing up my car and moving to Saskatoon, changing my name, and refusing to play nice anymore. Because frankly, I may only be 24, the best may be yet to come, but if I want to be around to enjoy it, it’s gotta be more bearable now.

I strongly dislike what I currently do. Which, at this point, is probably old news, but I think I’ve finally put my finger on why. While what I do *helps* people in the moment, it doesn’t *teach* people anything unless they’re really in the right mood/mindframe to be taught. Which, I’m finding, when people are on sightseeing tours of the nation’s capitol, they really aren’t. Teaching/learning vacations are obviously reserved for places like Plimoth Plantation where people know they’re in for the education when they get there.

I also sat around outside thisevening and made a list of Things I’m Absolutely 100% Sure I Believe In.
To date:
-Love
-Inability to control every little detail (I believe, but I’m still learning)
-Microcosms (interconnected events/groups of people that occur for a reason)
-Nobody is actually that big a deal. We all arrived screaming and naked and we all die.
-Happiness should be a priority. If you’re not happy, you need to find a way to be. (another I’m still learning)

The following page in my notebook says “CHECK THE FUCK OUT”

Sometimes I need to just take my own advice.

Everything’s been so very up and down lately. The job is good, the job is bad, friends are good, friends are non-existent, we have jellybeans at lunch but I can’t find time to fit dinner in.

More and more lately though, I’ve found myself wanting something resembling a solid continuous presence in my life-it’s like I’m living that stupid Nickelback song or something. I’m not even talking about a love interest, persay, just another brain I can turn to and be like “goddammit, I forgot the bread” that will go out and miraculously make bread appear before I need it.

I guess in a nutshell, I’m realizing that while I can take care of myself, it’s awfully high stress to do so right now. If the job were less thankless and more fulfilling, or I got more time off to recoup from it maybe I’d be dealing on a higher level, but as of right now, it’s just a grind.

Someday, maybe I’ll figure out what I can be doing that makes me feel like the world needs me a little more than it needs a glorified ticket taker. At this point I think I’m too stuck in moral fulfillment mode still. I’m still the idealistic college grad who wants to come out and CHANGE THE WORLD and either the world’s not so much in a place that supports that in anything I might do, or I’m mentally blocking myself from it because for once I’d like to be financially able to do a mess of other things, like travel.

And there’s the rub. I want to travel, I want to meet people and interact with them and basically be a cultural packrat, but to do that you need money, to get money, you need a job, and with a job comes restriction on the time you have to go wander at will.

Always a catch 22, isn’t there?

We’ve skipped Spring in D.C. and gone right for summer. I’m remembering again that I don’t deal well with humidity and heat in the same place at once unless it’s voluntary. This silly swampland thing can go… do rude things to itself as far as I’m concerned.

No, really, I know I’ll adapt. I always do, but the first week or so I’m a crabby mc crabberson. It doesn’t help that everyone here has A/C either, because then I’ll be tempted to turn it on in the apartment, and I know I don’t really need it, as I survived two Central PA summers without it and without dying. I’m just going to have to get good again at walking around with a water bottle and being willing to pee, instead of just figuring out my water balance and intaking only to a level that I sweat out, a stupid skill that I learned working in a desert over the summer a few years ago.

In other news, starting the new job tomorrow at the Capital Visitor Center, which all but promises the fact that the social media job at the Smithsonian will call me on Thursday and say “So, we want to interview you, you are made of AWESOME” and I’ll have to spend the weekend beating my head against hard objects and lamenting the fact that NOTHING CAN BE EASY HERE, CAN IT, LIFE?

And let’s not get started on the fact that Dane Cook’s car alarm guy has moved into my condo complex and is unleashing the fury on all of us any time someone drives by the car. No joke, I’ve heard it at least three times today ALONE. It’s only funny with the words for so long…

Ooof. I have a lot to do in paperwork today. But first, whatever Last.fm decides to give me labeled with “Finland.”

I’ve been sitting around at home contemplating my life and not updating here, which is bogus, if you ask me.

First off: REAL JOBBITUDE. Yeah! I’m a Federal level GS6 now, working at the Capital Visitor Center in Visitor Services. Not, y’know, the ULTIMATE, but it’s a start. I’m climbing the ladder. If nothing else, I can learn to say “Ticket holders this way please” in numerous different languages. (anyone want to give me a phoenetic jump on that?)

This also means PAY RAISE, so I’ve been being a little stupider with money than I should be. I recognize that, and have pretty much stopped at this point. Yes, Mom, really.

Also, seeking out new music. I have one CD coming in the mail (see above,) but I’m looking for sort of folksy-rocky stuff in the style of Great Big Sea (who, by the way, are coming to DC this summer, and I need to get my tickets like yesterday. Same with Spring Awakening, coming in August.)

Finally, for today:
Happy Passover to my Moses followin’, pyramid buildin’ Egypt fleein’, Matzo eating Jewish friends.

Well, I’ve achieved DC, for what it’s worth. I’m on the second day of training to teach 35 some wiggly underappreciated high schoolers, and other than the gripping “OH DEAR GOD I KNOW SO LITTLE ABOUT GOVERNMENT” fear that keeps chasing me around in a room full of my poly-sci major co-workers, I have every faith that I can absolutely kill this job.

Until then, doing the reading homework and watching Bang Bang, You’re Dead again. (I always tell people it’s one of my most influential movies, and they always just figure it’s some wierd shoot-em-up thing. I need to come up with a better elevator statement than “It’s focused on the psychology of school shooters,” because then I just sound like some twisted wierdo. I need to start working on “It’s on bullying in schools and how REAL teacher involvement instead of lip service can have an impact on students that would otherwise be labeled “troubled” instead of “targeted”)

I am so VERY TIRED of having to fight the universe to look pretty. It took two days and an hour-long round trip to a different mall to find a suit, and then it took an hour of frustration and continued disgruntlement to find someone to clean up my hair… and for $30, if I had been able to take my eyes out and set them to the side so I could look at the back of my head, I’d have been able to do just as well, if not better.


I mean, curly haired truth. Most stylists have no idea what to do with curly hair unless they’ve been specially trained to deal with it. The lady that usually does mine cuts curl by curl, so that she can see how everything is falling, and she does it dry, so there’s no worry about shrinkage.


The first thing this stylist wanted to do? Wet me down. I managed to talk her out of that, but she still brushed all of my hair out, and then insisted on cutting it in all straight lines. If you cut curly hair like that, well, it’s just never going to be quite right.


I don’t understand WHY after living in this hair for 23 years, stylists want to discount what I can tell them about cutting it the best way possible. It’s not like I’m pulling it out of my ass… I WATCH how the stylist I like does it.


Between being a pants size that doesn’t exist and having a torso too short for normal jackets, I feel like the least I can ask is the ability to find a hairstylist that doesn’t butcher me. Even “ethnic” salons are out there in most good-sized cities, clearly marked, or connected within the community, but curly stylists are so hit or miss it’s ridiculous. It’s not like curls are rare, so why do I feel like such a minority?


And how come people never seem to believe that I LIKE my hair like this? Twice now, I’ve had women from the hair straightener kiosks in malls come at me and be like “Think how pretty your hair could be if we straightened it!”

Today, I finally just snapped at the goddamned saleswoman and asked her why she thought I was wearing my hair curly if I didn’t like it like that, before ripping into her about how she was just promoting the negative body image of any female who falls even remotely outside the status quo of what all the stupid beauty magazines want us to look like.
I think she might have actually gotten it, as she left me alone when I came the other way back down the mall-concourse.

And hooray to Pennsyltucky for not totally sucking for once. Maybe now the Palin Curse will fall off the Bears.

If anyone wants anything from Mystic, CT, now is the time to speak up so I can get it. I actually found a framed ‘art’ picture of Mystic Seaport in a local Goodwill the other day, and had to look at it a few times to convince myself that it really was the ropewalk and the same little white lighthouse, even if the Brilliant had changed sides of the point out there.

Mystic Reunion weekend is kind of wierd. You belong without really belonging-I’m sort of glad I was a Spring class that didn’t deal with reunion, because I can’t help but think that somehow all the reunioners steal the glory from the Fall classes. It’s cool to see people who have come before you, but at the same time, you want to make your own story without it being too colored by those who came before…. and since so many of the reunioners are so much older, I think there’s almost a generational disconnect. Perhaps a lesser one, as Mystic attracts a pretty consistent type of person, but a generational disconnect nonetheless.

It’s almost the way I describe roller derby or the SCA to people. You’re part of a group without having to be actively part of a group- if someone from Mystic sees a car broken down by the side of the road with a Mystic sticker on it, you stop and help that car, regardless of the year someone attended, or which semester they are.

I suppose in a way, Mystic is the sorority I was never a part of, simply because I objected to the giggly pinkness that usually surrounds sororities. It’s a group of similarly minded people who will usually try to help one another based soley on similar shared experiences.

And on that note, I should print some resumes before I take off tomorrow.

Oh, and wish me luck on the Starbucks interview. Somehow, we determined that ‘Barista’ was probably a step up from ‘Lifeguard’ in the marketability scale.