Shoelaces for Josie

Sometimes I am just not bright. Or I just don’t think. Or I’m just plain stupid.

I’m applying for internships all over the country. I know it seems weird. Here most people are jetting off to their full-time jobs with super-cool companies or they are traipsing off to the BV Ghetto (Des Moines). However, I am applying for internships and not even doing a very good job of it. I just applied for one internship and forgot to change my letter of application from the previous one I had just applied to.  

So instead of saying I was super excited to be considered for an internship at Skidmore College, my letter of application said I was super excited to be considered for an internship at Adams State College instead. Awesome.  Simply awesome. So I emailed him back with the right letter of application - I’m guessing I won’t hear back from that college, haha.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do if I don’t get one of these internships. Perhaps what is even a bigger worry is that I’m not even that concerned about it. What is to be, will be and what isn’t to be, won’t be. That’s what the Dalai Lama would say. Or Humphrey Bogart - either one really.

P.S. - Freddie is in with the short shorts on the elliptical. My day is complete. 

I found out today that my boss is leaving - the one that has ALS. I knew he was going to be leaving. I knew this was going to be his last summer. I knew that. But I didn’t know that he was leaving on the first of July. That’s a month from now. Thirty days. Suck. Major suck.

You know that book by Mitch Albom - Tuesdays with Morrie. I’ve read part of it but I can’t finish it. It’s one of those things that hurts a little too much because it feels like I am reading my own life. I have found that, for myself, it’s easier for me to make it through difficult things if I just don’t think about them. I think that is what all my psychology friends would label “avoidance theory” or blame it on some recessed traumatic experience I had as a wee child. Right. Whatever. I like to just call it “dealing with it.” Everybody has different things that work for them and I don’t think that makes one way right and another wrong. It just makes them different.

Maybe it sounds like running away. Maybe it is. But some problems just don’t have an answer, no matter how much you analyze them or try to figure out a plan to deal with them. Like this problem - or situation rather. What benefit is it going to be for me to try and figure out how I’m going to deal with my boss who has a terminal illness? I’ll deal with it when I must and until then, I will just push it to the back of my mind.

In other news, I did the dishes while my roommate mowed the yard - it was very Peter and Lois Griffin of us. It’s kind of nice living in town, no more BV, cozy home - although ironically, it is louder than when I lived on campus. The people across the street blare the local country radio station, the guy next door was using a chainsaw to cut down his tree and the people on the other side chainsmoke. Freakin’ sweet!

I sort of am. Ok, not really. But yes. More so than my roommate who got up at 11. I see something intrinsically wrong with that. Unless it’s me of course. Then it is completely acceptable.

I don’t have cable for the summer. And since I live in a black hole, bunny ears will get me one station and that is PBS. I grew up with PBS - who can’t love Lawrence Welk, Sesame Street and Bob Ross? But I don’t necessarily want to waste hours away to those three things as a college graduate. Instead, I plan on watching movies. Dead Poet’s Society was the first on the list.

“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world,” said John Keating.

I thought it was appropriate to kick off the summer with a scholarly movie such as that one although I should probably not mention the fact that I went to bed halfway through it. Don’t judge - I had already seen it!

Yeah - that’s really all I got. It’s too cold in here for me to think properly ergo this entry sucks.

I graduated. Those two words sound so surreal. Graduating is one of those things that doesn’t really hit you until later. You have on a robe, a hat, a tassle. You walk, you shake some hands, you get handed a diploma. But it doesn’t seem real. I’m trying to sit here and think about it so it will sink in but I’m not so sure I want to really think about it.

Graduation is a bittersweet time. It means you’ve accomplished something, reached a goal, stepped over a hurdle - but it also means you’re closing a chapter of your life, leaving things behind you. Some things I’m glad to leave behind. I’m glad to leave behind all the bad memories I have of this place and some of the people here. I’m glad to leave behind the university itself because I didn’t like it. I’m glad to have accomplished something I worked hard for.

I’m not glad to leave behind my friends. I’m not glad to leave behind the late nights of staying up and talking and laughing and drinking. I’m not glad to leave my little house, my roommate, my life. That’s me being sentimental. I usually am not sentimental - not on the outside. I like to keep it all inside. Sentimentalism makes you vulnerable.

And now I sit in my house here now. It’s empty - I’m sitting on the kitchen chair watching a ridiculous movie on television and writing my last blog from my former life. And all I can think is this: did I do everything I could have with the time I was given in college? I don’t think I did. I graduated with a 4 point. I had a ton of friends *I think?* I worked hard for the student newspaper. I worked jobs and I went to games. But I’m looking back and I see things I could have done better, I see things I should have done and didn’t, I see empty holes and I wish I could fill them. Since I can’t, that’s my goal for this next chapter in my life, whatever it is since I’m pretty directionless right now, but I want to fill the holes as they’re happening so I don’t have to look back and regret the emptiness. 

And I’m on to the next one.

How great would it be to be a part of a band called the Foo Fighters?

Person: “What do you do for a living?”

Me: “Oh, you know, just fighting the foos.”

My college days are over. I took my last final yesterday that I didn’t study for, got my grades last night, celebrated appropriately and have been a complete waste of space today. Ah, the good life…too bad the real world is going to smack me right in the ass in about, oh, three days.

So my gown doesn’t fit. I realize that graduation gowns are supposed to be large (although I haven’t found anyone who can give a good reason for why that is). But mine isn’t just large, it’s - really large. Large as in you can fit at least three of me in it and that’s not a lie. And my hat is too big. I can just see myself walking through the arch, my hat blowing off and me running desperately through crowds of people in black too-big gowns to get it.  Because you know Freddie won’t let me walk the stage without that stupid thing on.  You can get caught for academic dishonesty three times and still graduate with a diploma but don’t have your hat and you’re just screwed.

I was looking at myself in the mirror, trying to find a strategic place to pin the gown so it didn’t look so much like a beached whale that’s been there for seven weeks. There is no strategic place.  The thing is so big that when I try to pin it, it all gathers and folds and then points straight out at the bottom. Stupid. I decided that I looked like those characters off of the Nintendo Wii. And these gowns have puffed sleeves. Puffed sleeves?  Weren’t those cool in like - the 60s or the 80s or the 70s or sometime that is not now?  I know Anne of Green Gables was dying to have a dress with puffed sleeves. Now that I have my very own set, I really don’t see what the big deal is about them.

Apparently we’re all going to be made to look like a bunch of tools - college graduation is a perfect time to dress a bunch of people up in what amounts to black garbage bags, make them walk to the ceremony, sit for 2 hours, get up, hear your name called, shake some hands, grab the empty diploma holder, flip the tassle and smile at the hundreds of people you don’t know and mentally shake your head in wonderment at all the graduating seniors you don’t know - were they here all four years?

Yes, college graduation is the perfect time for The Man to make us all look like idiots. 

Is it possible to have been on this journey for four years?

Saying goodbye has never been my strong point. In fact, I really suck at it and I think it’s because I care too much. I prefer to leave and not say goodbye - kind of like a bandaid. Just rip that f-er off and get it over with real swift-like. But I can’t do that here. No, I’m going to have to learn how to say goodbye and I’m going to have to learn it quickly and I’m going to have to learn how to do it a lot.

This f-ing sucks. 

I have all these words inside of me. I can’t get them out in the right order and I so wish I could. Perhaps I can’t because it’s a part of me I wanted to share, an inside part of me that I rarely talk about. The words escape me, song lyrics will have to suffice for now.

“I guess it’s time I run far, far away, find comfort in pain, all pleasures the same, it just keeps me from trouble, hides my true shape like Dorian Grey, I’ve heard what they say but I’m not here for trouble, It’s more than words it’s just tears and rain.” 

For one of my final projects for class, I have to experience life as an “other.” The other I chose was wrestlers. Not a likely other, huh?  Most people chose poverty or a different religious view or race. I chose being a wrestler. I don’t know why - because it sounded interesting?

I usually don’t talk about my class projects because it’s class. I have to live and breathe it all day long, why would I spend time blogging about it?  But this project is a little different. Long story short, I have become a wrestler over the past week as much as I could. I’ve run, I’ve eaten less than I have before in my life except for when I’ve had the flu, I’ve run some more, I’ve done crunches. And what I’ve done isn’t really even half of what they do. It’s just unreal.

I wish I could describe it. I wish I could take you through it but I can’t. All I know is that I can’t look at things the same way. A part of me wishes I could go back to the way I was and a part of me is ready to embrace this new view point.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost

Incompetent people freakin’ SUCK. I don’t like working with people who can’t pull their own weight. If you’re going to fly with me then you damn well better be able to do the work. I do my work. And I do half your work so please, PLEASE, can you just do the half of your work in a proficient, timely manner?

I know they say the new generation is needy and whiney and asks for too much. But I hardly think that asking someone to complete half their work well is too much. I think it’s not enough. Is there people walking around asking me to do this and this and this?  Oh yes indeed. Add that to my work and the half of your work that I’m doing and what do you get? 

A person drowning in work who is headed to the bar. 

Why in the world would you name your kid Mia? She would forever have an excuse for being late, not showing up to family dinners, ignoring curfew.

I have been a bit MIA lately on my postings. The final screws are being ratcheted into my college-career-coffin and I’m attempting to pull together some motivation to finish off the last leg of the race. It’s a struggle. Hence all my energy being thrown into that instead of updating my blog. Sad. Some day I promise I will have my priorities in shape and will post twice a day.

I have some great ideas for entries though if I don’t forget them. Like commentary on TV shows and my capacity for doing the wrong things at the right moments. 

If you had a bad day though, let me tell you something that will make you feel better. I wrote a 10-page paper about the Galapagos Islands in one day. No sweat, you say. Well, what is a sweat, was my intense work-out session(s) for my final project about wrestling. Plus a presentation over the Galapagos Islands. Too bad I didn’t get to that take-home test. Oh damn.

Now don’t you feel better about your life? And if you don’t, well, don the name of Mia and take tomorrow off.