Uncertainty.

Friday should be very interesting based on the phone call I just made. Two of my high school friends are in town. I haven't seen one of them for a year and the other for about two years. I can't help but be concerned about what this meeting will reveal. They were handing off the phone to each other intermittently and while I was talking to the haven't-seen-or-talked-to-in-two-years friend she basically yelled into the phone "oh my god, I can't talk right now. I'm so high!" ??? I would kind of expect that from the other friend based on our last meeting, but I think this one might be having some real difficulty in her life right now, and I'm more than a little worried that what is supposed to be a friendly get-together this Friday to catch up and whatnot is going to turn into a stoner party and end up with me feeling awkward. As I get older and more aware of people's behavior, I've come to realize how many potheads there actually are out there. It's kind of disturbing to me that these people feel like they need to get high all the time to have fun or whatever. I'm not trying to make myself sound "superior" or anything, but I genuinely don't get the appeal. For me, there's always a heavy fallout when it comes to the party scene. Personally, I've been through a long enough period of time feeling out of control, and I'd prefer to stay away from chemical stimulants that would toss me right back into the throes of chaos. Last time I met up with these two, the haven't-seen-or-talked-to-in-a-year friend was offering me these horse pills or something in the car on the way home which was bizarre enough. I don't know. I just hope it doesn't get to the point where I feel uncomfortable. I'm not gonna sit here and judge people for what they will or will not do, but I'm not going to pretend that I wish people my age and my friends could just hang out and chat without any of that stuff involved. There's another aspect to this upcoming meeting that is most definitely going to push some added weirdness onto the situation. The haven't-seen-or-talked-to-in-two-years friend now has a boyfriend--one that she picked up on a hitchhiking trip across the US. ... ??? Oh man, it's going to be an interesting night.

Get that blame out of my face.

Since when was it my responsibility to do the food and milk order? Oh, right, you told me to do it ONCE while you were on your week-long vacation to Mexico, so I did it then. I've gotten into the habit of checking to make sure you've actually done your part in terms of this, but to be completely honest, I purposely did not check whether or not you had placed it on Saturday, because seriously, I'm tired of being the only one to keep up on these things. Don't give me attitude when you've been sitting in your office all week talking/chatting for hours on the phone with other store managers and haven't bothered to do one of the few things you do to keep our store running. I already close the store more than anyone, work more hours than anyone, do all the other ordering for store supplies, do deposits at least twice a week, do the tips every week, order trash bags, and run the floor every single shift that I work. How about you delegate some of these responsibilities to the other two shift supervisors who, curiously, work mid-day barista shifts and have basically no supervisor responsibilities and/or work a 4-5 hour barista opening shift with occasional (though certainly not daily) cash handling duties thrown in there? I hate being so worked up and bitter about everything all the time, but it's really upsetting to be confronted first thing on Monday morning about why I didn't do the milk and food order THAT IS NOT AND HAS NEVER BEEN MY RESPONSIBILITY!!!!! I am better than this job. And I deserve more than what this has to offer. There's no joy or pride or ambition in this work. It's just a day to day grind, dealing with the same people, doing the exact same thing, working with the same people, wearing the same thing day after day after day. This isn't one of those rage spots (like in my last post) that occasionally make me hate my place of work. This is something deeper, more gnawing...I can feel the weight of it pressing down on me and it's really starting to get me down. Thank goodness I'm going on vacation soon so you can all see how well the store runs without me and I can get away from you and this place for a while.

Had it.

V. : You need to get a grip. Listen, I really understand the whole anxiety thing. I've been there. I've had too many panic attacks to count. But don't expect me to be all sympathetic and forgiving when you throw me under the bus at the last minute (literally an hour before we're supposed to open), and (surprise surprise) you end up getting a 3-day weekend. Don't expect me to be your best friend when you show up for the meeting. I'm not going to play all "fake nice" when you BAIL on me and I end up working two days in a row with no lunch or breaks (one 7.5 hour day, and one 10 hour day--hmm, combined, that's about a week's worth of work for you). I hope you noticed my blank stares and refusal to make eye contact with you. It was almost unbearable to listen to you present the new products with your stupid fake stuttering and ridiculous attempts to be upbeat and excited about every little thing. You need to stay on that head medicine, because quite frankly, it's getting to the point where you're coming across as irresponsible and unbearable to deal with. Also, with your whole boy situation, GET OVER IT!! You HAVE ANOTHER BOYFRIEND. The only reason you're still obsessing about the ex is because he's the one who broke up with YOU, and the notion of someone having that "ending it" power over you is what's driving you crazy. Also, the whole vegan thing is a big fat crock. If I have to hear you talk about your stupid vegetable sandwiches anymore, I'm going to either lose it, or eat a huge bloody hamburger from Red Robin right in front of you.

C.: You are the sorriest excuse of an employee I have ever seen. Let's see, you work for about 3-4 hours a month, complain about the 1 or 2 days you get scheduled, try to give away your shifts, and then complain that you aren't getting enough hours. Also, I wasn't aware that texting on the floor, reading homework assignments, and staring off into space qualified as "work," because that's about all you're capable of doing when you're on the sales floor. Oh, and thanks for texting me once to tell me that essentially, you weren't coming in, and neither was your replacement, and then turning your phone off so that no one could know what was going on or if anyone was going to turn up. You are probably the most self-centered person I have ever had the misfortune of knowing. Oh yes, and let's not forget that you've probably never been on time for a shift in your entire life. But don't worry your pretty little head about it. I'll just set up everything and wait for your sorry ass to show up on the doorstep 20 minutes late. You may think you're hot stuff with an acting career ahead of you, but let's face the reality of the situation: you're a mediocre high school level talent with absolutely NO singing ability or ear for pitch (even though you would be the first to start singing show tunes at the top of your lungs in a public place in the hopes of impressing anyone within earshot--NOT!). Also, your sex life is none of my business and I want to KEEP IT THAT WAY. I don't want to know, so stop talking to me about it. I could've lived my entire life without knowing that you got an abortion, and it's disturbing to me that you talk about it with such ease and carelessness. Do us all a favor and just quit already--go back to your yuppie college friends and enjoy trying to pay off your ridiculous student loans for the rest of your life on a Shakespearean actor's salary. Life is not always going to be this easy for you. Enjoy it while you can, buddy.

W. : Hey, remember that time I worked a 12 hour day for you because you took too many sleeping pills and slept through your shift? Well, it would've been nice for you to return the favor today, and to have gotten off of your lying butt to come work for 3 hours in place of the no-shows. It makes me feel great to know that you've got my back. No no no I understand, you just had to sleep in with your trapped-in-the-closet "boyfriend," because you've had a really hard week of working for 5 hours a day, taking 3 hour naps, and then folding towels at the gym for another couple hours before calling it a day. It's a rough life for 'ya, isn't it? Don't ask me for anymore favors because I'm through being used and abused. Oh, and you do WHAT in the mornings? You DEEP CLEAN the condiment bar? Hmm... that's interesting, because just yesterday I scrubbed off a huge coffee stain in the garbage cubby that had dried and been there for at least a week. And the drain bucket was nice and full of rotting milk and coffee. MMMM!!! Yeah, I know you like to make yourself sound important--like you actually do something besides touch ready-to-eat food with your nail-bitten bare hands and flirt with every guy who turns in your direction (gross), but I'm not a complete idiot and there is absolutely no way that you are going to get away with claiming that you do lots of cleaning projects in the morning. But I have to make myself look on the bright side: at least I only have to work with your moronic ass for 1/2 an hour per week.

B. : So... you're twenty-eight, high as a kite, and drunker than a skunk at 8am? Newsflash: you're a sorry excuse for a train wreck. Hmmm maybe I should get promoted so I can spend my salary on pot and booze...oh and trips to Vegas (I'll wait till I've had about two paid months off for an incredibly grueling "back problem," then go for the weekend), week-long cruises, trips to Spokane, trips to the ocean etc. etc. etc. I'll leave all the actual work for people who get paid $11 per hour and then leave after three hours of being at work because I'm so stoned that I'm about to fall asleep standing up. Oh, and don't you dare threaten to write me up because you're too lazy and inattentive to notice when we run out of things that it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO ORDER. You're a joke.

Bottom line: I won't be overextending my kindness to any of you anymore. I'm just there to do my job, and you'll have to figure out your own problems from now on. FIN.

Can't sleep.

Buzz of the fridge
Drone of the Brain
Sun about to rise
Sound of distant trains and shipments
Slow and steady uproar of traffic and seagulls
Last streetlights twinkle their last
And sizzle in the midnight air.

Cook a whole turkey!
From frozen to juicy!
In less than thirty minutes!
New meaning to the word "glazed."

Holding breath
Let it sit in your chest
For a minute or two
Trickling out
through your burning nostrils
and cracked lips
To no avail.
No rest for the endlessly restless.

Not in a hurry.

Everyone thinks that I'm in a hurry to move out. Am I? I don't think so... The major benefit to moving out will be not having to run around all the time all over the place, carting a bag of stuff back and forth between Renton and the Udistrict. And however much people are telling me to "relax" and not be in a hurry, the more I think that there IS something of a deadline--Steven's lease is up in August, and since this is the first time I'm actually MOVING OUT moving out (not just going to a dorm room and leaving half of my stuff at home), YEAH, I want to be prepared and have time to get my stuff organized. I'm sorry that I didn't want to wait till the last three weeks of August to find a place and go through the turmoil of being under a far more intense time crunch. I absolutely refuse to subscribe to the notion that I'm experiencing some kind of internal desire to distance myself from my parents as soon as possible. My dad and mom seem to think that its my instincts kicking into full gear, and that I am demonstrating a "very common behavior in a young person who is ready to move on." Consider the following: I am now 22 years old. My parents got married when they were 19 and 20. Granted, it's a different world now, but I feel like there's a certain measure of guilt that I'm carrying around on my shoulders. I know my dad is joking around with the pouty lip and stuff, but it really gets to me, because then I start wondering if I am being selfish, if I should stay at home as long as possible. I love my parents. And I start to think, how much longer are they really going to be around? 20 years? 30? 50? I don't know why I have such morbid thoughts as these, but I sometimes think about how I'll be able to live without the thought that my parents will always be there. I wish that day would never come. I sort of feel like I'm leaving them as anyone naturally leaves their home eventually, but I'm experiencing this disturbing sense of "when will they be leaving me? And will it be for good?" None of my family is in the greatest of health (including myself) which makes me even more worried. I love spending time with my dad and I don't want that special daddy-daughter relationship that we have developed over the years to fade just because I'm living in a different place. I guess it'll be up to me (and us) to maintain it. Of course I'm scared. I don't know how things will work out, and I am really, really terrified of arriving at that day when mom and dad aren't around anymore. I am tearing up as I write this, even thinking about it. Even though we go through life building relationships and creating families, we are ultimately and inevitably alone. My absolute greatest fear is not death itself, but that I won't be able to see or be with the people I love when I die. I just hope and hope and hope that we'll all be together again--that our existence in this Universe is not just some minuscule chance, but that we have some purpose, and that everything won't just fade to blackness. A science teacher once explained the cycle of humankind's existence in a class I was taking in completely non-spiritual terms. There were billions and billions of years... and then there was you...and there will be billions and billions of more years after you. In essence, the death of the soul. I'm freaking myself out. I need to stop for now.

After the fact.

It all went by so fast. I had a great time, got a little fatter in the bank account, and ended up getting 4.0's in all three of my final classes! The next step will be finding an apartment. It's not like I'm super eager to move out, but it seems like the most logical next step. Even though its a kind of "bottom of the barrel" job, I've been having some concerns over the flexibility of my position at Seattle's Best. Being out of school makes me feel pretty liberated, and I want to take this opportunity to do a bit of travelling, especially to visit my friend in California when she gets there (Disneyland!!!!). This job pays relatively well for what I have to do, and I don't want it to look like I'm being a flake, requesting off a lot of time and expecting it to be waiting there for me when I get back. I've only worked there for just over a year, and I don't want it to seem like I'm taking advantage or something. I was expressing these concerns to my dad when he said something that made a pretty big impression on me: "don't let practicality be a prison." I'm not planning on making this job into a career. I just don't think that working for Starbucks (even if its in a salary-paying position) would be fulfilling in any way. It's just coffee. I'm hoping that Steven and I will form our own production company and start making our own feature films! Might as well dream big at this point. ;)

The countdown begins.

Well, I guess I'm standing on the threshold of something big, about to jump off the ledge of the family nest into the big bad bright world. Or am I? Is anything really going to change that drastically? It's not like I'm going to be offered a six-figure job as a magazine editor right out of college, and the notion of having to essentially start from scratch with a mere (yes, mere) BA under my belt is, in the very least, intimidating. The advice I'm getting from all sides is basically telling me to do what I want to do...to "follow my dreams"...but how can I survive off of dreams? I'd like to make a living as an artist of some kind or another, but is that not the general dream of every naive youth in the nation? My friend is living in a studio in Boston where she sells her paintings, sometimes for $500 a pop. Wouldn't that be the life? Painting to survive? Writing to survive? It would certainly be better than slinging coffee to pissy lawyers and secretaries for a living. I'm a firm believer that there's only so much abuse a person can take in the customer service sector of the work force before he or she begins to break apart. I don't want to reach that point. They don't pay me enough. In fact, they don't pay me enough to clean up the bum puke off the front steps, but I do it anyway. What kind of life is that? Especially when I could be living in the big city like my friend, surviving off of my own creative intuition. Some people that I work with have been in the coffee business (I mean, the "taking people's orders and making coffee" aspect of the business) for over six years. I'm just over my year mark and I'm already starting to get the "move on" itch. I guess I don't know what's out there for someone who has spent the last two years writing academic essays on english and world literature. Teaching? Sure, but that only puts me back in the school scene. I need a break. Maybe I should go to Italy. Or New Zealand. But on who's dime? I need to start preparing answers for people coming to my graduation party about what I'm going to do with my degree. Graduate school? Teaching degree? But I have a premonition about what's really going to happen. I'll graduate. Maybe move into an apartment in the summer. Steven will probably move in with me later. I'll keep working in the cafe. And then? Who knows. Nothing? Everything? Nothing?

The guilt that doesn't go away.

I was talking to my coworker tonight about this fight that I had with my dad when I was 16 or 17. My dad and I are really close, and we rarely, if ever, fight. In fact, I can't remember any other fight we've had since then... or before then for that matter. My mom and dad and I were going to Reno, and my dad had said the night before that we were going to leave around 8am. Being the procrastinator I am, I waited until that morning to pack, keeping in mind the 8am deadline. I got up around 6am and took a shower, and was working on my packing, definitely taking my time. My dad is the kind of person who likes to get an early start, so when he SAID 8am, what he really meant was that he wanted to get going as early as possible. Anyway, I heated up some leftovers (Mandarin Spicy Chicken from when we'd gone out to dinner the previous night--we were going to be gone for a week or so and I didn't want it to go bad), and started eating. He suddenly jumped up, asking me what I was doing and didn't I think that we were going to stop somewhere for breakfast and that he and mom were waiting on me all morning and what did I think I was doing? And then... I said the thing that I never thought I was capable of saying. I don't even want to say it here because I still am in shock over it. Let's just say... that I called him the worst possible thing you could imagine a daughter calling her father. Of course, he completely flew off the handle (and rightfully so) and then the whole trip was tainted with this opening fight that we (or more correctly, I) had ruined it with. I was completely at fault for it. I don't know what compelled me to go there--into that unthinkable realm of name-calling that doesn't get anyone anywhere, but just makes a person look like a heartless, selfish idiot. I'm pretty sure I'll live the rest of my life in regret over this fight because I love my dad so much and I never meant to let it get that far. You know how you might think something mean, but never actually say it? Instead of just keeping it to myself, I let myself slip and it's something that I think I'll be paying for for a long long time. I cried and cried and cried after the fight. It was the kind of crying where you can't catch you breath and you run out of tears and you rub you eyes so much that they turn blood-shot red. I've never cried so hard in my life, but it wasn't over how my dad reacted, it was because of the shame I felt. I've never been more ashamed of anything I've ever done. I have never told anyone about the fight and I don't know why exactly I brought it up to my coworker... I think we were talking about cussing and why people do it or something. Even as the story was coming out of my mouth I was thinking "what are you doing? STOP!" but I kept going. I guess on some subconscious level I thought it might be something like a confessional. Maybe I was hoping that telling someone about it would help me deal with it better. No. No. Not even close. I couldn't believe the look on her face when I told her this story. I wish I hadn't. It was this horrified, shocked kind of face that has lost some measure of respect for you. She said she couldn't believe that I could actually say that to someone, much less my dad. I told her that it was almost inadvertent--that I was just as shocked after it happened as were my mom and dad. Now I'm going through all the turmoil and trauma of the event all over again because it's become like this little black spot in the back of my mind that will always be there to shame me. I don't know how I can get past it. It's the sort of guilt that doesn't just go away.

It's scary when you have to schedule a time to sleep.

It seems like I can't find time to do anything fun anymore. When I do have free time, I always use it to sleep, which seems like such a waste. I'm at a point right now where I've been going going going without a substantial break from it all. In fact, I think I'm so used to this high pace, school work steven schoolworksteven that when school is finally out of the picture it'll seem like I have more time. I know that all of my pre-work hobbies have pretty much dissolved over time (like piano and drawing and such), but I think I'm going to really dedicate myself to finding those things again once I graduate. Maybe I'll look into piano lessons again. Randomly, I'll sit down at the piano and try to play something. It's not a total mess, but the total lack of playing has certainly made an impact on my abilities. I would love to be able to retrain myself, and since I have the basic tools to do that, it seems like it might work out. I really want to have that back in my life. It seems like being so absorbed in school and work has made me forget about things that used to make me really happy, like playing music, or creating something. Not that I don't enjoy reading and writing...I feel like I've learned a lot in college--things that I think may or may not contribute to a high-paying career, but will definitely shape my character and help me grow as a person. One of my teachers at Highline (an old guy who looked like the stereotypical "scholar"), said that as college students, we should try to take as many literature and english classes as we could, and introductory classes of everything else. He was into the whole "self-teaching" philosophy of learning... Digression! Anyway, yeah, that's going to be one of my main goals in the coming year: regaining my piano/music hobbies.

The first blog I've ever posted.

I don't have much to say right now, but I'm creating this so that when I do have something to say that I can't say somewhere else, I can write it and leave it floating in cyberspace.