cough cough cough cough hack.

ugh. i cannot shake this sickness.

when will i stop coughing and start sleeping?

(i sound a little like a nyquil ad)

man, that’s really folky.

i think what i miss most about college, is the diversity of my life. more in a social sense, i suppose. i’ll explain.

i’ve got a touch of OCD, so i thrive on making schedules and plans and having aspects of my life fit into neat little categories that make sense to me. so for me, having a class schedule where i knew the start and end time of all my classes and where they would fall in the day, and having a work schedule with shifts that had a concrete start and end….these are things that worked for me. one of my favorite things to do was to make a daily schedule that would look something like:

(taken from an actual  livejournal entry circa 1/2004)

6:30 wake up and get roomate to drive me to school
8-9:30 zoo 331 [human anatomy] QUIZ!
9:30-10:20 study for lab quiz/waste time on the internet
10:20-11 walk to work
11-1:30 work
1:30-2:10 walk to school
2:10-4 zoo 331 lab QUIZ!
4-6 psychology 459 [lifespan theories]
6-7:30 [saki bombs at jess's house...ok, so that's not so bad..=)]
7:30-8 walk to school
8-9? matt sharp [ex-bassist for weezer] acoustic show at cal poly
9-12 homework [study for quiz, lab report due...all tomorrow]

as you can see, i’m a little nuts. but it totally worked for me. a lot of aspects in my life are out of my control, but my schedule was the one thing i had a grasp on.

in my life now, it’s difficult to maintain a routine, or schedule. my work is extremely incondusive to my OCD tendencies. i don’t really have to be in at a certain time. it used to be 9am, which turned into ‘between 9 and 9:30′ which now has become ’sometime before 10.’ my day is no longer planned out. i can make all the to-do lists i want, but i’m completey and totally at the mercy of someone else’s schedule. it kills me. one night, i’m out of there at 6pm. the next, i’m fidgeting in my seat at 1am cursing my ability to settle for a job that does not allow me the kind of flexibilty i need to survive.

i mean, is there a job out there that is the same, schedule-wise, everyday but allowing diversity? there’s a balance. i like continuity, but bore easily with sameness. it’s like leftovers…i can do them, only if i disguise last nights steak into a steak standwich with onions and peppers. it can be the same thing, but packaged differently. is there a job out there with manic mondays, and TPS report tuesdays, and expense process wednesdays? something the same but ever changing? do i make sense? am i effing crazy?

i guess what i’m saying, is that i miss when i had a little control over my life. reading over past journal entries from college makes me miss have a break in the middle of the day, and being able to fill that time with something enjoyable, like hanging out at the radio station and exposing myself to new music, or going to the library and reading, or seeing a movie mid-day.

is there a way to have it all?

ground control to major tom

when i’m watching tv, and it goes to commercials, and you see a blip of a commercial and then it cuts right to another commercial, when it looks like an accident…i like to think that it’s the traffic controllers first day and his supervisor is right behind him, and he accidentally pushed the wrong button, and his supervisor says “oh, that’s ok…it’s your first day…don’t worry about it….just get it right for next time.”

 i wonder if that’s what really happens…..

at work….

everyone knows what the back bathroom is for.  everyone.  

party of one.

again, i feel as though a part of me has died, but i haven’t decided how i feel.

 when you realize you’ve lost a lover but gained a friend, should you celebrate?

i <3 neurotransmitters.

i took the day off work today, due to the fact that i was going mentally insane with stress, and to my sheer horror i found myself thinking about what was happening at the office while i was gone. what the hell is wrong with me? am i a workaholic? is my life work? do i have nothing else to show for myself at this point? oh my god. i am a uni-faceted women with nothing but my time-sucker of a job to represent me. i’m a 24 year old producer racing to hit my glass ceiling. something has got to change, before i become one of those people who leaves the phone on the table at lunch, and tricks people into thinking she’s talking to them, but she’s really talking into her bluetooth, and uses hand motions and mouths words to communicate. i cannot become one of those people.

so i guess it was a good thing that i took today off. i had a pleasant experience at the DMV, when i only had to wait 5 minutes in line, took care of business, and then i was out. i went down to 3rd street, where i bought the book Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody, the same women who wrote the screenplay for the movie i absolutely adored, Juno. i sat down to have a nice lunch alone, and started to read the book where i proceeded to laugh out loud the entire time i was reading, and most likely creep out the group of american apparel clad post-teens in the booth next to me. from there was shopping, where i ran into an old friend of mine and had an hour long conversation with him about all things life, and then to the video store where i picked up the movie Once, which is supposed to be amazing.

this evening, naomi and i decided on a sunset bike ride down by the ocean. we stopped at the waterfront for dingers and food, and sat and chatted about..well, everything. it was nice. i’m lucky.

i’m attempting to go run before work tomorrow morning, so i’m setting my alarm an hour earlier. i presume after the relaxing day i’ve had today, it’ll be a little easier to wake up and start on this new regimen i hope to keep, of exercising in the morning.

endorphins baby. gotta love em.

pack your bags.

i’ve recently been inspired. and maybe it was the threat of a new year, or the realization that i’ve been spending way too much time thinking and stressing about things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of life, or maybe it’s my brain yelling at my subconsious to exercise it before it dies completely, but i’ve been inspired. by books, by movies, art, websites, you name it. but it’s today, tonight, this night, that i am choosing to do something.

i used to keep blogs all throughout college, and i miss having that outlet for my stress, my feelings, my life. i miss readers. i miss the publicity. i miss when my dad used to email me back my own entries, commenting on my life, and when my mom used more exclamation points than usual in her IMs, when she found out i had quoted her, and wrote it on the blog for everyone to see.

when my good friend mika from college sent me the link to her blog, about her new life as a liberal 20 something college graduate living in israel, i got inspired to start writing about my own. my own life as a liberal-conservative 20 something year old struggling to come to grips with her new life in the harsh face of reality…..ok, ok, so i stole that line from almost famous, whatever. but honestly, it’s mainly about me, trying to find myself in what i think is one of the most transitional times of “growing up.”

so, i suppose, now that i know what’s out there. now that i’m not just another invincible college prick immune to the tragedies and the misgivings of life. now that i have been inspired, and have the option of taking that inspiration and doing something. now that i’m in it…

…now that i’ve met my fork in the road, do i take the beaten path or the road less traveled?