Love lights up the world, so my fortune cookie proclaims.

This is the crap that came out of my fortune cookie.

So despite the crap load of screaming that goes on, the in fighting, the injustice, and the unnecessary drama of my house, my parents had a nice night out with their friends.  My brother and I got Chinese good, and as pictured, I got a very optimistic fortune in my fortune cookie.

I don't know if the universe is trying to play some cruel joke because I'm not the most optimistic person.  Nor am I the kind of person that takes fortune cookies seriously, except for a brief stint when I was thirteen where I recorded what every single fortune cookie I got said.  I wanted to see if the crap lined up with what was happening in my life.  But I don't order Chinese food enough to get the degree of continuity needed to really judge the outcome of that experiment.  Unfortunately, my lack of optimism is balanced out by a hopeless romantic trait.  No matter how many times I get hurt and declare men to be pigs, I somehow always end acting like a total idiot.

My fortune cookie read "Love lights up the world."  I'm not about to examine whether or not it's true.  I know it's true. Love makes people smile, laugh, and feel connected.  It makes people go after what they want. It helps people realize that maybe if they can't get what they want, they already have what they need.

Love is not lost in my house.  Maybe it's taken me some time to realize it because there's a lot of other stuff going on.  We're frustrated, we're crying, we're yelling, but the fact of the matter is we're so emotional about it because we do give a damn about each other.  Even if sometimes we say we don't and we try to cut our losses and move on because we think it will hurt less. We can't have the good without the bad.  If only there was so much less bad.

My dad has recently been talking about taking a big career risk and weighing the risk versus the reward.  But it's no bigger a risk he took than when he married my mother or when they decided to have children together.  Raising a family is a huge risk.  My mother lately has been talking like it wasn't worth it. My father said he'd never thought it'd be like this. I'm so proud of us for sticking it out.

Doesn't change my unrelenting desire to move out though.

He said that I'm never satisfied, that nothing's ever good enough for me.

So what?  It's a symptom of ambition. It's what drives anyone to go after what they want.  But as of late I've had some difficulty dealing with the fact that some things are just out of my control. My whole life I've been saying to myself that if I work hard enough I will have the things that I want.  But it just doesn't work that way with people and relationships.

I've discussed before how one can't save anyone else from themselves.  People have to want to fix themselves. I'm not talking about saving anybody else though.  I'm talking about falling and falling hard, and not getting caught.

People are complex, and they don't always know what they want. I can shake my head and look at my studies and my dreams and say that's good enough.  But I can't look at a guy that I can't win over and tell him I'm going to keep chasing him until he gives in.  That's insane.  That's some psycho drama drugstore romantic novel bull crap. On a side note, when a guy is overly persistent it's cute and when a girl does it's desperate.  That's some double standard bull crap. But I digress.

When this guy told me that I'm never satisfied, I thought damn right. He wasn't talking about himself in that context, but he may as well have been. I always reach for the best thing, whether it's in my grasp or not. I just have to take a step back because he's not an option. 

The only option I have is to better myself and look for things and people that make me happy.  And he's never going to make me happy in the way I'd like.  I should move on to someone who will.

Lea Michele's 'Glee' character said "Being a part of something special makes you special."

What about starting something special?  Every time I come to halt in my studies, my future career, and my personal conflicts, I come back to the same place. I come back to writing.  It's my thing, my only thing.  I refer to myself as a jack of all trades. It's not untrue; I can be great at anything I learn. But it's my home turf.

My seventh grade English teacher changed my life. I'd known before I'd loved writing, but he introduced me to a world of style, structure, and feeling that I'd been tapping into unconsciously.  He helped me to try to master it.  He was so inspiring.  I led my friends to a two year long venture of creating our own compilations of writing. The second year we almost started a website. I loved doing it.  I loved editing, I loved writing my own stuff, and I loved directing my creatives.

When we gave him the first compilation, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Seeing my teacher moved by just the gesture, and how compelled he was by our work and use of words moved me.  I want to move everyone else and I know the best way how.

On Glee when Rachel Berry says her bit about being special in the pilot, and then again and again throughout the course of the show, all I can think of is our meetings in the taco place on Northern Boulevard collaborating.  And it is those memories and that aspiration to be amazing at in on a wide scale professional level that make everything I face in my life worth facing.  Because I know at the end of the day, nobody wants what they want more than I want to do what I was born to.

That gives me hope.

I can't even tell when my own smiles are fake anymore.

When I was in the eighth grade, I started having issues with my schoolwork.  I started handing in assignments late, not handing them in at all, and ditching test days.  I even just handed in a blank test with my name on it once.  My parents were very concerned.  How could this be? My average was previously in the high nineties and now it was just all of a sudden going to have a 12 point drop?

My mother called the dean, because he'd been my English teacher the previous and had a prominent impact on who I am. I could speak volumes about him but he's not really what this story is about. He told me that everyone goes through their phases during adolescence, and it was good I was getting mine out of the way early.  And then he said to me, "Never regret, only ambition."

I've lost faith in this a little bit this week.  I've lived my whole life living forward but now all I want to do is turn back time.  I'm making so many mistakes and so repeatedly.  I've strayed from the few philosophies I have.  I've caused harm to people other than myself, I haven't taken responsibility or action and I haven't moved to change any of the things that have happened or even to apologize.

I'm not mature.  I'm not an adult.  I'm a stupid kid.  Oh look, there I go messing with another philosophy.  I just made an excuse for myself. Not all of my problems are necessarily my fault, but isn't it my fault if there's nothing I can do to fix them?

Not that they are all so insolvable.  Just the root problems seem to be without solution.  The other problems are mere symptoms. They've been searching for the cure for AIDs for decades.

Her mirror is just as bad as her villain.

She's booking it.  She needs to be faster.  She has deadlines, she has things to do.  She's getting undressed.  She needs to find her robe.  She sees a flash of flesh.  Who is that?

That's the girl in the mirror. The girl is laughing.  Taunting every misshape, scar, freckle.  Every little piece of blubber hanging over, and every stretch mark lining them.  Every single piece of food she's ever had just bulging out of her. And that face, that damn face.  Little mutt blood mix, who could tell definitively what ethnicity she was? Almond eyes, triangle nose, caramel skin.  So many things wrong.  So much laughter.  So much taunting.

Now she's daunted.  She doesn't want to walk out the door.  She puts on her robe and grips the dresser like it's the only thing that's holding her to the ground.  She thinks about what she keeps in the top left drawer.  She needed something quick to hold her, but maybe that wasn't it.

Her father would think it cowardly and pathetic for her to do it.  But her father would also be taunting her and not just for her looks.

So she left the knife where it should stay.  But her heart was still aching.  She races down the stairs and slams the bathroom door, locking it. Throws herself in front of the toilet and kneels.  Doesn't even bother pushing her hair back.  It just needs to all come out of her.

All the mistakes, the things that were wrong with her, inside and out. Every time she let herself be talked down to. Every time she was cheated, every time she cheated someone. Every day she watched her brother slip further and further into melancholic stasis.  Every time her father poured a drink.

Every time he told her she wasn't good enough.  Not smart enough.  Not pretty enough.  Not thin enough.  Not understanding or quick. Not a good daughter. Not good enough to live with him.  Every time a boy reinforced what her father did and said.  Every time she was left, lied to, wronged, forced.

She wants to puke how much of a turd she was out of her.  She knows she is no good for the world.

He likes a good freakshow and she likes a nice prince.

She just watches him really closely.  She's memorizing every expression on his face and his movements.  His silly grin. The way his shoulders shake when he laughs. The way he he shakes his head and dances because he's bored.  

He's next to her and that's all she needs.  They're laughing about some absurdity she has committed.  She's that weird.  That freaky.  That slutty.  But he doesn't judge.

He tells her about his hopes.  His dreams and nightmares.  She tells him, nothing he could do would ever be a problem for her, and nothing he asked her to do could be a problem.  She lives to make him happy.  She lives for his smile.  His laughter.  His comfort and ease.

Because she knows he deserves it.  She knows there's nobody else in the world who's better than him, and is so glad she gets to be in his life.  Even if it's not in the way she wants.

That's how she knows it's real for her.  There's no turning back, no question of reciprocation.  It's unending, unrelenting movement to impact him.  He deserves to be happy.

At least one of them should be.

So I know I just said not to do it and I'm still doing it but...

...yes, I'm still procrastinating.  But I can never shut up on my pretty little blog.

I need a break from this town.  It's full of old schools, old jobs, old boyfriends...it's just full of exes. Things I don't want to talk about anymore, things I don't want to see.  Things I don't want to follow me around for the rest of my life.

I walk down the street and I can see the spot where I had my first kiss.  I walk several blocks in the opposite direction and bam, my first job.  I'd have to take a couple of buses to get to my elementary school, but my middle school and high school are within the mile.

Life is full of firsts and some of my happiest times were the ones where I wasn't thinking.  The moments of spontaneity, of unadulterated easiness.

But some of my more recent spontaneous moments were moments I regret.  Moments that I can't shake the memory of, moments that won't let me sleep.

Like the moment I decided one of my most influential mentors needed to be cut off.  Despite all blood relation and responsibility for sperm that made me.  That's definitely one that won't let me sleep.  Or the moment I got a hickey that received some unwanted attention.  That's definitely one I regret.

I used to really live in the moment.  I really didn't care about what happened to me or what happened to the people around me.  I was a total hedonist.

Now living forward has a different definition than living in the moment.

I wasn't happy when I lived so freely though.  I was just extremely well distracted.  Now my problems have strutted through my doorway--red feather boas and all--and are begging for my attention and dancing for my cash.

First midterm in less than eight hours.

I was sitting in the cafeteria, an hour before class with sixty pages to read and four pages I'd just printed out.  Those four pages were my writing and my friend had just found two major grammar errors.  In a paper due in the next hour. It had taken forty five minutes to correct on behalf of my teacher's comments and  half an hour waiting to print it, and it had taken three seconds for her to find what was wrong with it.

Procrastination is a horrible but all too common problem that is not unique to college or work or being a person.  It drags people down to the point where all they want to do is nothing.

I have a midterm in less than eight hours.  Actually, even less than that since I stopped writing this blog post a while ago to buy the online study course.

Remember all the things I said about my ego?

I still got this. I had two extra large D&D hazelnut coffees with cream and sugar.  That's all I need to survive.

If he blames it on the alcohol, I will deck him.

Sometimes people really piss me off.

"I was drunk" is like the best get out of jail free card for some of my friends who like to party.  It's kind of funny, because for drunks "I was drunk" is literally the one thing you can't ever say.  Because then the gig is up, you admit it to yourself and your family can do something about it.

Some people are very stubborn to admitting that they have a problem and don't realize the damage  they cause while they're under these influences. But god forbid someone close to them does, and World War 3 starts.

I'll admit when I tried point out that this person had a problem, I wasn't doing it in a nice way.  But my brother didn't grow up in a nice way and I'm sick of this pretending.  When we were arguing and my brother walked into the room, I had to fight every urge to start screaming at this person and to punch them in the face.

I'm sure the poison is the where a lot of the blame goes, but some abuse is too much to just point a finger at lax judgement and motor skills.  I get to ask about the things that messed that precious life up.  But they don't get to ask about my life.  Not anymore.

Some things that are said can never be taken back.  They ruined my brother and I will never ever forgive them for it.  And they ruined any chance of me forgiving them for what they did to me.

In the immortal lyrics of Mr. Billy Joel, Mama if that's movin' up then I'm movin' out.

I'm not a rich kid who takes a year off to travel and experience the world but I am a realist.  I believe in making the best of what you have.  Despite my realism, my ego is totally haywire and I believe what I have is better than what anyone else has.  I have drive, I have capability, and I have hunger.

However, I also have limited funds.  Deferring a semester has been a debate I've been having with myself, my parents, my friends, and my teachers for the past year.  My mother thought it was a total mistake, that I would forget everything I've ever learned and that deferring would make it harder on myself.

My friends and my teachers seemed to think it would be a good idea though, to start in the spring rather than the fall.  I happen to agree, now that I'm basically halfway through the fall semester.  I still live with my parents, they still want me out, and I still want out.  So clearly, this was a mistake.

The only reason I did stay was to watch my brother.  Because despite my earlier posts about how I can't save anyone that doesn't want to be saved, I really want to save him.  And for all of the reasons to defer for the spring and start again next fall, I still really fear falling behind in my studies if I do.

So the question is, if I didn't have all these external factors unrelated to my education, would it still be a good idea to defer?  My mother makes it seem like I'll suffer terminal brain injury.  She says it gets harder to go back the longer it gets put off.  Which honestly, again my ego has gone haywire,  and I don't think anything less than an Adonis could make me brain dead stupid.  The problem is I don't know anyone that's deferred a semester to work that has actually gone back to school yet, and I don't want to get stuck in a job and an apartment with three roommates to keep working to live.  If I'm not careful, that could turn into what the rest of my life looks like rather than something temporary.

Is deferring a rudimentary mistake for an education and a career?

Us neo-max-zoom-dweebies have to stick together.

Like I said before, my life isn't an eighties movie.  My idol didn't write it.  It so follows my high school lunch table was never a princess, a basketcase, a criminal, an athlete and a brain.  It was basically seven different versions of brain.

They did carry different other elements of that core group though.  Our princess brain was a very typical high headed, high maintenance girl with a killer drive to get what she wanted out of school. She had a very high strung mother.

Our athlete brain wasn't driven by the negative reinforcement as the princess was.  He was driven by his want to help himself and those he cared about.  Then there were sub variations of basketcase brainiacs which ranged from the edgiest to the saddest of all of us.

Then there was me.  Which honestly, I have no idea where I'd put myself.  I was never stereotyped by  my friends, even though they constantly offensively did it to each other.  But it didn't matter.  We weren't the Breakfast Club.

After high school, sometimes people struggle to find things they still have in common.  Sometimes it's lack of time, or  just a huge distance.  In New York, it's a bit different.  Unless people actually dormed in another state, most of us were either commuting or dorming upstate or on Long Island.

I asked my dad if he stayed in touch with his friends from high school.  He says that if people are important enough to you, it doesn't matter how big the distance is. You'll still stay friends, even if you don't talk often.  When real friends see each other, they pick up right where they left off.

I was really worried that after the summer--that I made all about work and a boy--they would stop wanting to hear from me. I mean, a week after graduation I heard other kids talking about how they had already cut a lot of people off.  But now I know who my real friends are.  The princess still calls, and we still help each other with essays.  I still can call on one of the basketcases when I'm in tears.

Ironically, the athlete doesn't even make conversation with me when I'm on his cashier line, despite the fact we work in the same shopping center.

Like I said, we're not the Breakfast Club.  Our story doesn't have an end yet.

Ferris Bueller took ten days off in his senior year of high school, not his freshman year of college.

I wish my life was like an eighties movie.  I'd have great hair, awesome musical numbers for no apparent reason that were admired by Olive Penderghast, and great friends.  I'd also have the ability to hack into my school's database and dial down the number of absences I've had.  I'd also still be in high school, so skipping class wouldn't be as big a deal.  Or, I would be in a fraternity, so I probably wouldn't care one way or the other.

But in the words of Miss Penderghast, John Hughes didn't write my life.  Even though one of my aspirations in life is to write a coming of age movie that outdoes my idol's life's work, it doesn't mean my own life actually is as cute, as funny, or as conclusive whenever there's a big social, romantic or family issue.  Also doesn't mean the fact that I've skipped cultural anthropology five times now or political science every single time except the first day can be made out to be cute or have a happy ending.  It just ends with me in tears, because I screwed myself over.

In a previous post, I said I loved my academic independence. I'm not so sure I deserve it anymore.  But I'll work with what I've got left. Like it or not, I have all the way until the end of December to take the classes I have now.  I should do well in them, at least pass them, being that I did pay for them.

Which is why I'm taking away my lax attitude.  I've been way too comfortable with my schedule and not following it.  I'm going to schedule study time, project time, and follow my class and work schedules to the letter.  Since positive reinforcement clearly isn't the best way to get through to myself, I'm going to start taking things away from myself.  Like I'm in the third grade. But what will I be taking away?  What will it mean?

It means no more Netflix binging until I get myself together.  No more House of Cards for me.

It only took ten minutes.

I've been home since 9:13pm, and now it's 9:23pm.  Within that time period, my emotions did a somersault from:

1. Confused - About boys, and about how they expect girls to be mind readers.  How they have no idea how they want. And about how girls are exactly the same way but insult boys for doing it.
2. Relief - All duties for the day were attended to.
3. Alarmed - My mother was already asleep, so something happened in my absence.  Probably my father, my brother, or my father's treatment of him wore my mother out.  Or all of the above.
4. Annoyed - Because my mother's angry nap was starting take validity because what the patriarchs of the house were doing was now directed towards myself.
5. Tears - Because I fight like Tiger Woods' wife and I work with a passion and a blindsided goal like Jay Gatsby, but Tiger Woods' wife is no Joan of Arc, and Jay Gatsby is no Jeff Bezos.  Which leaves me at less than strong enough and less than good enough.

Disney screwed me over.

So this happened a while ago, and I wrote about it for my writing class.  I thought I'd share.

 My brother and I used to got to the park together to be free. We needed to escape the dissatisfaction, the dysfunction, and the misery our father burdened us with. We would grab our Razor scooters and a basketball after being asked a thousand time why we aren't star athletes and just go.

The swings were our happy place. Bowne Park was quiet and we could talk, or we wouldn't talk, and it would be just as nice. It stopped being so nice though. As we got older, I'd be on the swings and he'd skate around me. Later I would take my scooter and swing along. My brother stopped wanting to come. He wanted to play video games. He won't even come out for family dinner.

So I stopped with the swings, because other children would see me and stare blankly as if I shouldn't be there. I went down to the artificial pond and sat under my favorite willow tree. I loved that willow tree. It reminded me of Pocahontas, and though the story was wildly inaccurate, she was my favorite Disney princess. She was beautiful, colored, and she stood for something more. I took my notebook, my iPod, and my gum. I would try to forget and write fantasies where I'd be saved.

I thought eventually I was saved. I started bringing my boyfriend when I was fifteen or sixteen. I brought Matt to my special spot because I wanted to share it with him. We talked for hours there and we didn't have to do anything more. Superheroes were sort of our thing, and I claimed it was appropriate because he saved me.

I should have known better. I wanted to be Pocahontas, not Snow White. I could never return to Bowne Park after he left me for a pretty Caucasian girl who was neither smart or cool. She was plain and ordinary.

Pocahontas would have been strong enough to return to the park; at least the Disney version of her would be. But that's not who she really was. She was a teenager whose livelihood was traded like property. Mine was so damaged it was abandoned like a pair of shoes.

Starting from the bottom again: The Freshman

My first day of college was a bit unsettling.  Putting my butt in a seat for three hours to hear someone squawk is a very primitive way to learn.  And honestly, so was attendance being counted and being penalized if I didn't show up without an excuse more than three times.  If someone missed three classes, it was their problem.  It was their tuition being blown.

I'm making it sound worse than it is.  Doing forty hours a week (which honestly seems so easy after doing sixty over the summer) makes lectures seem like the easy way out, and also the easiest way to catch up on the work.  It feels so much better without someone breathing down my back every five minutes checking to make sure that I get it, and now they're just assuming I did.

It's also not like there isn't a way to get one on one attention in college either.  Some of my professors having office hours, and there are math and English centers within my school.  Basically, I'm not mandated to get extra help because everyone is mandated: I can choose to.

I'm really loving my academic independence.  I just wish I could get some freedom from my workplace.  It's starting to feel like it's a second home.  I'm on call on my days off and it's stifling, because how can I say no?  I'm not doing anything to warrant a call out.  I don't see any of my friends anymore.  I used to think that if friends were important enough you'd make the time after high school to see them, but I'm starting to doubt that now.  My best chick friend never calls me or texts me anymore, and it's not that she doesn't pick up or reply whenever I get in touch with her, but she's distant.  All of my friends are distant except those that I work with, of which there is one, because my workplace is run like a high school and they all gossip and talk crap about each other.

I don't get it.  I felt such a bond with my friend, as if we blood related.  No, that's also inaccurate. The people I actually am related to don't always treat me half as nice as she used to.  I took a week off of work.  I put in for it about a month ago, because my parents insisted we needed a family vacation and that we were all going to go and be happy and skip around in sweater vests like a bad after school special.  The week comes, and we've planned nothing.  My dad made a stink about how nothing gets done unless he does it.  Because despite the multiracial and liberal house we live in, he claimed nobody else including his working wife is capable of doing such a thing like planning a vacation.

So out of guilt, we went to some historic sites in Sleepy Hollow which I loved.  My father and my brother hated it.  With a burning passion for all things seventeenth century.  Sucks.  It sucked, that whole week.  I'm well rested now sure, but my family is falling apart.  Just like it was at the start of my freshman year of high school.  Except now instead of me being crazy and trying to desperately to come up from eighth grade slump, my brother is two steps away from dropping out of high school.

It really does feel like deja vu.  I'm sitting in the back of the room again with my head down in almost all black.  I'm breaking things and saying things I don't mean, and I'm stuck here trying to save people that want to be defeated.  They're losing against themselves.

I'm still being asked to get a better job and move out.  I could never forgive myself if I left my brother high and dry.  He keeps pushing me away.  I made a move, I got him help, and I did what I could. But I can't make him want to be better.  I can only stick around to help pick up the pieces.  I'm just doing damage control.

He's so lucky. I left the only person who could help me, and that person hasn't spoken to me since.  I can't believe I thought I was on my own last year.

The next time I say that will be when I move out.

So here's the thing

I've lost a bit of my way since...April, since apparently that was the last time I posted anything up here.  So to get everything up to speed, after April, I took the AP Lit exam in May. I haven't even checked how I did on it, since I'm that sure I flunked it.  It's not that I'm inept in English class, I just seemed to be inept at trying at that point.  Which bites, because I paid eighty bucks to take the damn thing.  Then there was no senior trip, because the student body was a collective personification of randomness.  We did, however, manage to get our act together for prom.

My prom experience was not so great.  I spent about eight hours getting primped because I thought I needed one night to be beautiful.  I looked perfect, don't get me wrong; there are no better pictures of me than my prom pictures.  But when I finally got there, I was early and I waited with a teacher for my friends to get there.  When my friends did get there, we seemed to be at a lull.  What were we all doing?   We'd all seen the after school specials and the TV and rom-coms versions of this night.  There was drama and broken rules and cliches abundant.  None of that at ours.  Half of them left early because they just seemed mad at each other.  The half I hung out with I was guilted into hanging out with and then regretted it, because apparently after prom was code for let's-talk-sh*t about-what-people-did-at-prom.

Because what the hell did I get all dressed up for anyway?  I had no date, not that I needed one, or so I proclaimed.  It didn't matter.  The only guy I wanted to impress wouldn't dance with me and was ignoring me.

Not that that didn't change, a few days later.  He started doing the opposite of ignoring me and I loved it.  And the following week at graduation, my grandmother gave him the biggest death stare, silently wondering why I couldn't find a nice Filipino boy.  I guess she thought I would break my parents' multiracial stigma.  She was so overly traditional, snobby, and racist.  But I'm getting away from the point.

Graduation lasted three hours for a class they had about sixty names they had to call onto stage.  They turned it into a damn concert and had extra extra speeches.  My class valedictorian ended his speech with "May the force be with you."  Had I not been under an influence and had it not been the last day we would deal with these people, I might have stuck around to protect him from getting his ass kicked. But nobody who would have kicked his ass was graduating with us, so it really didn't matter.

I spent my summer doing sixty hours a week doing three different jobs.  Nope, sorry, that was inaccurate.  Four jobs, including trying to be the best girlfriend in the world while trying to support myself and my goals.  I wanted to be perfect, to have everything right in the world.  And I did.  Being in love makes everything right in the world, it makes all the exhaustion worth it and I wouldn't spent my summer any other way than the way I did.

What I do regret is convincing myself I could make it work with a guy who was dorming who I was never going to see.  I wanted so badly to be with him, to stay with him, but I was driving myself nuts trying to figure out how to do it and how to stop worrying he was going hurt me or himself or that I was.  So I just stopped.  I cut two of my jobs loose before the start of the school year, and I broke up with him on my birthday.  I was doing it for him, because as much as he said he was fine with the way things were, there's no way he could be.  And I knew that because I wasn't fine.

Can't save anyone, no wonderwall.

I am a very passionate person.  I give off the appearance of apathy sometimes, but it is only a safety mechanism so no one can touch what I strive for and hold most dear.

I hold a certain individual in a very high regard.  This individual is promising as a teacher one day and intelligent. He is funny, and noble and---and if I were to list all of his wonderful traits, this paragraph would be an essay dedicated to how wonderful he is.  But there is one very striking and unsettling way that he is not so wonderful.  He has no drive.

He has no instinctual motive to do and be better or to rise above an opinion to ascertain a new one.  He simply exists with no desire to move forward.  He's been in the same job for years, hasn't tried to go back to school and he doesn't try to even figure out what he wants.  He settles for stagnancy because it is safe and because he feels in this way, he is hurt less than he has ever been.

What strikes me most confused about his character, is that he chooses to stay in one place.  I've met people traumatized by their past, inspired by it, or in such decline from that past that they literally believe they cannot do things that "normal" people do.   But this is not my friend.  He recognizes his position, the worser positions and the better ones that come with work.  He vacantly decides not to move.  It's not as if he's incapable or blind; he's afraid.

And even as I tried to comfort him and assuage any of his feelings about not being good enough, he turned all of it away.  It's as if bullies' opinions amount to more than those who actually care about him.

It is literally the saddest thing I've ever seen in someone with so much potential.   No one can fix your problems for you, and no one can wave a magic wand and erase the past.  You can only blame people for what they did to you; how you choose to react or move on or not move is entirely up to you.  I honestly think that this apathetic attitude towards stagnancy is the reason why capitalism works so well for the 1% and why the college dropout rate is so high.

We had an existentialist discussion in AP Lit a few weeks back, and my class was split into two separate ideas: the one where your choices control your future and the one where fate decides everything for you.  Even if you believed in fate, do you really want to be the person who didn't try to change it?  Fate is such an abstract concept too; everyone thinks of fate as the endgame, where you end up.  They say it's your fate to marry this person or to end up with this job.  I don't think it matters. You can't just waste away because everything is predetermined or live in the past because everything already seems like it sucks.  Maybe we don't choose where we end up, but we sure do choose how we get there.

When I get to my endgame, I want to say I did all of the things I wanted to do, or that I was, at the very least, happy with what I was doing.  I know now I will have tried to be and do better, and when I get to my endgame I know I will have done exactly that.

As much as I love my friend, I can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved.  But I will never stop trying to convince him or anyone with this mentality that it is worth it to trying to save yourself.

It's your choice and your move.  Or lack there of.

As we all get further and further from being okay and tolerance for pain seeps into decay

Your nerve endings tense up and you close your eyes and you wait for it to hit.  All of your muscles are bracing in hopes your skin will feel less of the heat if they do.  The fear comes up the abdomen and starts to tickle into the throat. A pair of lips purse because if the scream comes out this whole facade will be ruined.

The whole facade of being okay, of being alright and good enough.  How much stress and hurt can a person take in one day? You can take the hours of work, the physical labor and the dealings with strangers. But then what? To come home to a house of such bitterness and anger that maybe isn't towards you, but certainly is being thrown your way.  Looking good enough to be a target. A target for their worries and their pain and they expect you to absorb it.  Only so much pressure can be contained within a closed space before it explodes.

Your head becomes a hanging pendant, threatening to fall off the neck as you climb up the stairs.  The heart and conscience almost become heavier than the head and you open the door to your room and close it, lest someone come visit with a high volume voice and a list of grievances.

When you're not good enough, but you have to deal with everyone's everything--fix their problems, comfort them, and act as a shock absorbent shield for all the pain they outwardly direct physically and verbally--it's not fun.  And then getting blamed for everyone's everything, and it being awkwardly rationalized to be all your fault--then running to the mailbox because you forgot about your college tuition deposit and checking your bank account to see if you're any closer to being comfortable paying for a single semester.  Asking yourself if the people you love will ever be okay, because if they're not you never will be.  Not because you have to deal with their shit; because you love them too much not to.

You look at your father and all his material success, and your mother and all the things that she wanted and got to make her happy.  You wonder what exactly must be achieved to be happy, looking at the people who have everything and the picket fence.  Their smiles are fake and you need sleep.

I have failed...

I know, I'm sorry.  I just got home from work and that's not an excuse.  My brain is half dead, it's 12:02 AM and I am not excusing myself.  I should absolutely be punished for not meeting my own deadline for posting.

My hands still smell like Clorox and the TV my mom is still watching is making noises. They hurt my head.  I am a terrible friend.  I went to work today and ditched plans with a girl I have known for twelve plus years.  I'm only seventeen, so twelve years is more than half my life span.

Sometimes, work is a dirty and filthy aspect of your life, literally and figuratively speaking.  It can get in the way of relationships, friendships, family--it gets in the way of seeing people you don't work with that are important to you.  Holidays, birthdays, parties, dating--they've all become completely and totally moot to me. And I mean schoolwork, please.

But other times, work is awesome.  It can be totally fulfilling, or at least that's what I'm telling myself. Last night, my assistant manager told me to write a poem for him about how water while I was sweeping the outside. It was titled "Boiling Bubbles" and was absolutely terrible.  But we laughed about it for a good ten minutes and it was nice.  Even though the place was dead and the rushes we had were completely spontaneous, fleeting and few, we still had a good time and still worked hard.  What is fulfilling, is that there are new relationships and new goals to meet that become prerequisite to accomplish the long term goal.  And the new goals make meeting the long term one more fun, but still more exhausting.

My two-minute-while-cleaning poem about hot water was, to say the least, a stumble and not funny in the least without context. What was funnier was how my coworkers told me it was deep with the most serious expression on their faces.

I am committed to making up my missed work tomorrow morning--oh wait, it IS tomorrow morning.  But in any case, I should be up to date with my schoolwork by the time spring break ends.

What is most worth slaving over than what you decide yourself?  What you want and what you need, when they go together?  Or is it one or the other?  And how do you even decide that without want overwhelming logic of need?

Adults may be kids who think they know everything but they still know more than me

I received my first legitimate paycheck the other day, and was entirely too confused about all of the government acronyms that were written up for taxes.  I could only identify "SS" and "MED" and even with this magical information bounty we call the Internet, I still could not find my answer.

My point is, aside from my horrid Google searches, as citizens, we should probably be informed about this sort of thing.  And as people, there are a lot of other things we should know about.

Adults cannot expect children to start working for a living, go to college, and meet people without knowing at the very least the basics of all this.  Learning on the way up or from parents or from some role model type figure is wonderful, but not everyone has that option.  Most adults don't have the time to teach their own children math and English, and that's why we have schools with teachers who are paid to.  So why would they teach us the rest of it?

Information is power, and technology has certainly opened a lot of doors.  But it makes the way we learn up for grabs.  That means it can be learned and interpreted in a lot of different ways.

But there aren't many different ways to interpret FITW (which is apparently the Federal Income Tax Withholding) or that in sexual intercourse between a male and female bodily fluids are exchanged.

Nobody explained sex to my little brother and he looked it up online.  Most of what he stumbled onto was porn.  Not trying to bad mouth porn or the Internet, but he was barely out of elementary school and he didn't know how to take the things he was seeing.  It's not like he was about to tell Mom "Hey, I found these girls licking whip cream of a guy's pee pee online.  What's that about?"

We need classes on basic, adult things.  There are so many different uncertainties with dangers that can be measured or just avoided with a little bit more knowledge.  I'm about to turn eighteen.  If I move out within the year, I'll be responsible for my own health insurance, for doing my own taxes, and I'll be at the age of consent.  I know next to nothing about personal finance or what bills I'll being paying.  But I still have a job.  I know kids that started becoming sexually active and smoking cigarettes in middle school.  We start doing adult things but we don't understand the repercussions of unless an adult tells us, or unless we get in trouble for doing them wrong.

Choices should be made knowledgeably and with cause.  I'm not downing the concept of spontaneity or risk because I know I certainly overthink and then act on impulse in different moments.  But I should know where my money goes when it gets taken off a check, and my brother should know the science of a basic, primal act.  We shouldn't get downed with opinions on what to do though, especially if we don't really know what the opinion's about.

Right On Time!

Hey hey hey!

I said three days, and here I am. I deserve a prize.  I want a cookie.  Or ten.  Or so.

I know, I'm pathetic.  But whatever.

I love this weather.  In New York City, it's been around 70 degrees Fahrenheit for a bit.  Spring is just starting, warm but with a breeze. I'd love it more if it was 85 degrees, like all the time.  Spring is great for creative fashion choices, but summer just feels so native.  I believe last time I said this post would be in list form and not a character rap sheet. So here we go:

Post Introductory Script: I think two posts are appropriate today.  One fun and sarcastic list (this post) and one more like the other posts.  The next one will be going up around 11:30 Eastern time, so I'll start writing right after the Mad Men premiere :D

Top 7 Most Common and Annoying Dialogues for a Busgirl

1. Why can't I order from you? What's busing?

So, just to be clear: A busgirl is not your waitress. She takes your drinks, picks up plates, make sure over the duration of your meal all of your napkin, vinegar, and extra amenity desires are satisfied.  In un-special cases, she is allowed to give your food and take your order if the waitress is busy.  The busgirl can get in big trouble from her supervisor for taking your order and not directing you to the waitress.

2. *gestures towards empty plate* Can we get all of this to-go?

Yes, you can take all of the heavy glass plates to-go.  Please don't make this joke.  Don't think you're original.  Anyone who has ever worked in the food industry has heard this a bazillion times.

3. Where's my usual waitress?  When did all these kids start working here?

Your usual waitress is one of two places: She is doing something else in the restaurant i.e. helping another customer, restocking etcetera or she is unable to work that day.  She will more than likely be happy to help you as soon as I take your drink order.  All these kids started working here when your oldie but goodie favorite cashiers, cooks, and whatnots retired, moved, or just quit.  I don't think it's any of your business where they went if your relationship wasn't personal enough that it did not go outside of the restaurant, and if it did go outside, I assure you, they would tell you. So ease your mind: the other people working here are just as competent or they would not have been hired.

4. Can I get a table for me and you? - or worse - *Gestures toward busgirl* Can I get her to-go?

These place second and third in the worst pick up lines I have ever heard. (First worst pick up line isn't busing related but it is "Do you have the time?" Girl: It's 3:08 "No, do you have the time to go on a date with me?") No girl is interested in a boy who uses cheap one liners in a such a serious manner.

5. How can you tell which one is Diet Coke and which one is regular?

I can tell because I arranged it on the tray I took it to you and I am delivering it you just after getting it from the fountain for you.  We can laugh about it, but the fact of the matter is yes, you do need half a brain for this job.  And as for whether or not I have that half a brain, you'll find out in a second because weirdly everyone can tell the difference between diet and regular Coke but no one can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi.

6. Do they feed you here? -or- They let you eat here?

No, they just let me starve because in all the establishments that don't serve food, they don't let you have discounts or benefits for being employed there.  If a busgirl ever says she is not fed at the establishment she works at, you need to march up to her employer and yell at him/her and then report them to the federal Department of Labor.  I don't know if there's a law against it; all I know is there should be so people can stop asking.

7. *as I try to pick up empty plate* I'm not done with my plate yet. 

I have this one customer who literally will not let me touch his plate until he's decided it's done.  It can be completely clean of crumbs and he will grab it back from me.  I am not allowed to take his plate unless there isn't room for the next round of food or unless he's just left.  I understand OCD and that's not it; I have customers that have that neurosis and understand their issues and cater to their needs as best as possible.  This guy just doesn't want me to work there and quite literally glares me down until I move on to help someone else.  But he always comes on my unchanging shift.  I don't understand it.

So those are my gripes about busing.  Not the most thought provoking things but please think about them the next time you're in a restaurant and your busgirl looks a little down in the dumps.

So, in an effort to clean up my act...

...I have made 13 mistakes this week, and the counting of them is probably not healthy.  I will be pushing a deadline on myself to blog every 3 days come hell or high water. Whether or not I close at work or get assigned a load of homework, this will happen.  I recently checked the dates on all my posts and it's wonky looking; they're mostly Wednesdays or random weekends.

Right, so my thirteen mistakes.  In list form, so they're slightly easier to read.

1) I wore a green lace dress and the slip covering my butt kept riding up.  Walking home with headphones in my ear, I didn't really realize it was happening and that everyone could see my flesh and panties.  At least, not until a weird guy asked me for directions and asked if it was purposely see through, and as I turned the corner and tried to fix my slip he told me it looked good either way.  Then I hightailed my hide toward the street where I live and never looked back.

2) Accepted extra responsibility at work without fully understanding the new task.  Dressing the bottom bun versus what goes on the top bun, because though I work at a burger joint I don't flip them.  I'm not even that dumb working teenager cliche.  I'm like, in the sub basement of cliches.

3) I got to school on time.  Which, I know, doesn't seem like a mistake, but I only got there on time, which meant the walk to school comprised of an awkward run in with a...person who is less than pleased with my general existence in his neighborhood.  Thank God I had a fedora on and stared holes into the damn sidewalk.  This is my fabulous burgundy fedora:

4) I have decided to eat at work for the rest of the week, and whenever I'm there.  My parents don't want to feed me when I get home after closing, and I don't like paying for food.  However, I'm going to have a heart attack by the time I'm 22 if I keep eating double patty bacon burgers with mayo everyday.  I'm not getting any younger, as the impending commencement would imply.

5) Thinking I'd still be working at the burger joint by the time I'm 22.  Unless I'm managing or owning the place.

6) Not doing my homework this whole week in favor of hours and sleep.  I want to blame senioritis, but I feel like all I'm doing is trading work and numbers received for a different kind.  One place involves me sitting in a classroom on the same level as monkeys and receiving a number grade for being less monkey like (though by no means not a monkey.  I'm seventeen.  Flinging poop is part of the job description), and the other involves getting treated like a monkey and cleaning bathrooms for money.  So either way, poop seems to be a common theme.

7) I did a bad coping thing. In an attempt to take my friend's advice and forget all about a boy, I went out with a different one who turned out to be an insert-expletive-of-choice. I got stuck in South Queens and didn't know how to get back.  I'm just glad the bus driver was nice.  I was literally running around an intersection for a bit in a skirt, completely pissed off and frightened.

8) I missed first period today because I overslept.  Almost missed second period too, but it felt excessive to miss a class where we were watching a movie that day.

9) I still haven't completed my FAFSA.  My dad's none too pleased with anything I do, so he wasn't the nicest about helping me out with the whole taxes part which is basically the entire application.

10) I'm not be supportive of a friend despite her rough issues and because she was being annoying.  If there's one thing that makes me feel like a bad person, it's being intentionally mean to people I like.  I don't care about my hedonistic impulses or trading work for school or homework for sleep, but I know I'm doing something wrong if I'm hurting others.

11) I'm avoiding necessary confrontations.  One is with a missed test, one is with a senior pictures issue, and one is with the boy I attempted to get over and failed, because in comparison the dipwad I wanted to move on with was a dipwad.

12) Another inaction-type mistake.  I have a To Do List that has not been touched.  In a month.  Or so.

13) I had a social anxiety attack because my teacher asked me to present notes on the fly and I wasn't prepared.  So I was crying in the stairwell because I stuttered a little.  Drama queen? Maybe.  Diagnosed? Not yet.

In an attempt to be less depressing, the next post will also be in list form. Though it will  not be a rap sheet of my weekly character again.

Countdown on an "experience"

Today is the penultimate day of March.  The month after is April, then there's May, and then June.

Then I won't be in high school anymore.

I won't ever don a uniform again.  I won't fight to get into the crawlspace that is the small hall of lockers for senior girls.  I won't write or edit for my school newspaper anymore.  My teachers will become memories, memories will become names, names will become blurs.  And these people that I call friends, will they still be my friends come fall?  Will they miss me?  Will I miss them?

My mother once told me that life is a series of leaving people and people leaving you. My father constantly tells me that high school is the easy part, that it won't even be important or memorable or acknowledgeable at his age.

But what they might refer to, or I might refer to later, as an experience, is my life.  The average high schooler, even if they work all the time like me, has no idea what the outside world is like.  We have a ton of preconceived notions of being adults, but we have no reality to attach the cliches to yet.  This is still happening though.  I still force my way to my locker, I still eat the cafeteria food, and I'm still a kid. And if I'm anything like my parents, it appears as if these four last years won't mean in anything in the next ten.

I find it to be inaccurate, honestly. Events from middle school and elementary are still fixed in my brain, are still a part of the sum of the experiences that make me who I am.  Next year, high school will be lumped in with those.  Four years after, college will get lumped in too.  And in the autobiographical memories, I think they'll still be important.

The spelling bee I won at 10 is still important, as well as the first poem I wrote at 8.  Creating a writing compilation as a tear jerking thank-you gesture to a teacher at 12, performing in the church choir and in the school dance team--maybe my memory for good things goes a little farther back than my parents. In my freshman year of high school, I asked out my first boyfriend. I was so nervous, I shook and asked him to repeat himself because I couldn't believe he said yes.  I learned that I wasn't perfect--that despite being exceptionally smart, I still needed to work for what I wanted.  I figured out that repression and coping could be evil to my mental health, and that my own judgement wasn't as trustworthy as it was before all these new teenager questions got asked.  I nearly overcame my perpetual shyness, and now my quietness is more selective than ubiquitous.  High school wasn't a major catalyst.  There was no epiphany, nothing that might make my parents remember it.  It's just part of my growth.  And I think my progress, and I think everyone's progress is at least worth the acknowledgment, if not the memory.

My best friend told me last night that I work like a psycho, but I found someone else who's a psycho too

There's a plate of salad not eaten.  There's bits of chicken that were left alone.  The plate is bigger than a human head, and the orange juice is half gone.  The chocolate chip pancakes are in ruins; they're in bits and pieces.  The lighting is cheap, as well as the booth.  The service is mediocre.  The food itself--well, chain restaurants.  It's not even.  It's a chain diner.  The company I'm keeping is engaging but loquacious, and perhaps a little too much like myself.

This is the sad night out that is the break from this crazy, awful tailspin of a senior year.  I mean, the company I was with was great but the concept was skewed.  I just recently found out that Queens College doesn't e-mail; they send physical letters through the post office.  I don't know why Queens College is stuck in the 1950's, but I've been obsessively checking my e-mail for news from them every second of every day and now it seems the point was moot.  Now I have to search through the mail in my house, and HOORAY for that, because my mother is actually more disorganized than I am.

I'm exhausted and I was a horrible, horrible person to be out with last night. I almost fell asleep like three times, and to make things worse I took work phone calls during the meal.  I've been so sick lately, and so stressed.  I'm waiting for the point this post should be making to just get blurted out as not Rita types beside me, but a blue eyed blonde who doesn't give a rip about my existence types beside me carelessly.

So I guess the point I'm making is, the only way to get through this horrible thing called senior year is to remember the good parts.  As pathetic as the concept of the night out may be, it reminds you that you are working so that one day, hopefully soon, you will have a life where you can smile at the person across from you instead of squint at them and wonder about the work you have to do when you get home.

I want what I want.

It's really bad that I have no idea what I'm doing.

I just...I can't.  I haven't gotten zilch for acceptances OR rejections.  I have all these crazy worries that something didn't go through or my application got lost or something ridiculous that's just not supposed to happen and I have nowhere to put these worries. It's getting to the point where I'm wondering, what if I don't get in?  What then?

And what if getting in isn't what I really want?  What if I don't know what I want?  I don't know a ton about any of the colleges I applied to, just that those colleges would be okay with money and with what my parents want.

Seriously, the only thing I want is out of my house.  I want my independence, my freedom, my career.  But further than that, what if my career is wrong?  What if I change it 9 times? What if I get some weird literature degree that doesn't qualify me for any job?

I'm just really worried and anxious.  I thought I always knew what I wanted.  I've been certain since the third grade I would write for a living, and it was decided for me that I would go to college and move out and stay in New York.  I don't reject any of these things that my parents want for me; none of them are bad.  But when I look in the mirror I don't see what they want.  I know what they want.  My mother wants me to be happy.  But my father, well.  He's already seen his ideal daughter.  It was some intern at a company he worked at.  3.7 GPA and a double major who wants to work in his field.  That is absolutely not me.  My grades are up and down. I don't prioritize school or success  I prioritize doing what I love.  But that attitude has never made me popular at the dinner table or at any family gathering because my dad's parents, my grandparents, are just like him and I know they're not happy that all their kids didn't turn out the way my dad did. I'm not my dad and I have no interest in being anything like him, or my mother for that matter, or my grandparents.

But my peace of mind is contingent on my pleasing the parents I live with.  I can't be what he wants and I can't stop being me.  And I won't.

There aren't a lot of options for me in that house.

Big and Shiny and Not On Display in Your Living Room

It's easy to forget why you're doing all this. You're retaking SAT's, killing yourself over AP's, working 40 hours a week, and you're letting yourself go to the point where fingerless gloves actually seem like extra and not a prerequisite for your daily ensemble.

Even if you do everything right and get straight A's (Obviously this example is this IDEAL student, not me) and you get into the college you've been dreaming about, what if at the finish line you can't go?  What if money becomes a large, overwhelming issue?  It'd be like getting to the finish line and getting to stare at the first place trophy, but not being able to take it home with you.

As the spring begins to bear down on us all, summer seems short and fall seems like it's already here.  Some kids drop their studies at this point with one foot in the door.  Spring is going to be a few more months, summer's going to be two months, and then we have the fall.

The autumn, the mighty fall, that first semester, the beginning of that first year, where it seems like everyone drops out.  What the hell was any of it for then?

All of my friends who are of college age dropped out in the first year or didn't go.  All four years of high school leading to up to a huge, disappointing, anticlimactic crapshoot.

You know, you just have to wonder if that's going to be you and if you're okay with that.

I know nothing but not knowing

Remembering someone who isn't there anymore. A hand held, a straight stare for miles into their eyes--it all rushes back to you, a feeling of flight into the past and happiness for what was. 

Sometimes the tease of a good memory can be like the tease of a girlfriend: an annoying little bitch. Sometimes it's more like a gamble you always lose. And at horrible times the memory perpetuates itself as something real because we let it. Gatsby let it ruin him. Porcelain let it erode  her will. The father in "Pretty In Pink" let it come between him and his daughter.

And what do these people have to show for it? A bullet to the heart? Wounds that don't heal? A ghost?

But it's not always death or trauma that makes these memories so painful to have. It's a rejection, someone who said no a long time ago. Someone who teased you with the idea that life was better with them and that home was with them. That they could save you from yourself. But nope. There's someone else to save, someone else to better, someone else to make a home with.

Ghosts of superheroes who didn't really exist. The angel who fell. The memories you can't be sure are memories, because they're so good they're fantastical. The ones you knew if they hadn't happened, you'd be better off because you can't miss someone that you don't know. But you do, because you think you used to know them.

I can be so blindly certain.

My principal likes to tell us, "The world is run by those who show up, on time."

I come in late a lot to school.  Sometimes purposely, sometimes just as an effect of waiting until one in the morning to start sleeping.  In college, we all imagine it's going to be different and we'll change our ways.

I think to some degree that's true.  Paying thousands of dollars a year for the crap you used to get for free could definitely change your mindset.  Especially for some of my friends, who worked overly and extremely hard to win scholarship money--but those are the kids who will arrive early and leave late because they want to chat up the professor and ask as many questions as possible. I mean, they do that now.  They've done it for the past four years.  But it's not like change is such a hurtle, so unheard of.  I've changed my opinions, religious views, and work ethics so many times and I'm only seventeen.  Perspective changes with both time and just what's happening.

But here's the thing: what student doesn't love to miss class? So many kids cut now, so many will in college, but so many of those kids will probably be part of the college-dropout-after-the-first-year statistic.  It may be cliche to say, but I don't want to be another statistic.  I seriously doubt I will; getting the money to go to college is such a hurtle in itself.  It'd be a complete waste of my time and energy if I was going to skip class or not do well.

What my real problem is, is my own personal apathy toward lateness and ditching.  I worry some of my friends won't graduate because they have that same apathy and that we're all watching our attendance rate to make sure it doesn't go below 90%.  I know I'll graduate; I'm a total expert at getting by at this point, even though I think this year's grades will prove that's not the only thing I want.

I don't know what I'm going to do in a real college class yet.  I want to graduate high school first.

A Lesson in Ethics

Things get prioritized in the order of importance.  It sounds straightforward but for some people it's complicated, because everything in their life seems to be complicated.

When some say it's complicated, it never is.  I know that someone will point out the obvious thing to do, which is never ever what they really want to do. The right thing is the harder thing, and in the way of cliches it's the least popular because it's the most true. 

But some things aren't complicated and don't have a complicated solution. Some things in life just need to end.  Immediate termination.  Like a boyfriend who wants to be #1 priority when the girl can't even find twenty minutes to do her nails.  Or a person so amoral and possessive they hurt those around the person they're upset with, instead of the person they're actually upset with.  People just need to get cut off at certain points.  Whether it's one party's fault or the others, it has to happen because it's the right thing to do. It's not always so hard to say no.

Which is not to say it's always not so hard, because priorities are a bitch.  I prioritize my friends' well being over mine and it has been working out.  My own well being, however, is so far down on the list.  When I get hurt, nobody sees me cry.  Because it's not their problem. It's my problem.  And my problems are no one's concern.  The ones I cause that get my friends hurt?  Those I fix.  With those there is swift understanding, planning, and execution.

My problems are my delusion.  My arrogant, self centered delusion encouraged by my own laziness.

Thank God it's Friday.

Signifying Stress of Substance

So I've already established I'm not deadline aware. A lot of my friends are, and I've seen them stress, and it made me think stressing is for squares.

But I watched a local newspaper the other day under a deadline of tomorrow's paper or the next online post. I couldn't be sure which it was, because it felt as if no one wanted to talk to me or wanted me there really at all. Every facility was being used and no one was sitting around doing nothing. They were all working together, for themselves, for each other and a purpose. Many were so focused on their documents on computers. Others were rushing around, meeting people. Trying to find space for me was nearly impossible. They'd gather and then ungather (yes, I know that's not a word) and move in totally opposite directions and then back again with a new update.

It was a stressful environment but they weren't squares. They were conquering a purpose. They were a singular entity putting out a mass of products and they are role model worthy for this procrastinator.

A Night to Remember...or to not even happen

The apathetic senior class has elected not to hand in their senior dues, which means there's no deposit on our prom venue.  That means we might lose the venue, which means no prom.  No prom means no corsages, no ball gowns, no itchy tuxes, no "we didn't mean for it to happen" in the back of a limousine.

It means no conventional memory of high school, John Hughes standard cliches.  (Which is incredibly unfortunate; I really wish my life was a John Hughes movie) I think if they cancel prom my friends and I will organize our own thing, being that the student body is too clique-ish too even come together to chant *SENIORS* in the auditorium.

Not that I really care.  I don't have a date.  The only reason I care about prom is the dress.  I love fashion, and if I don't have a prom this year, I'll never have one.  I'm never going to the Grammy's, and I don't know what black tie affairs I'll be attending outside of weddings, so when is the next time I'll get to wear a ridiculous, self indulgent ball gown or sequined sparkle glitter ball dress?

I suppose I also care because it's the last time this group of people will be together partying, but most of this group doesn't want to be together.  We've only ever had two dances in my time at my high school, and the first one was crazy.  None of my friends went, and if one girl hadn't pulled me off the couch, I would have been really depressed the whole time.

But if that considerate girl, who stands on a social polar opposite, was willing to dance with me, who has fought with my friends before, (and by fought I mean, yelling and screaming and sent to the dean's office) then why can't the whole senior class cut the crap?  This is supposed to be our coming of age.  Why can't we come together?

Five Minutes

I have five minutes to write this post before I decide that laundry and schoolwork has some significance. Today's prompt was priorities and I prioritize poorly, if that wasn't completely apparent by my last blog post about my issue with deadlines.

"He chose poorly" is one of my dad's favorite movie lines. It's from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." If you haven't seen it, I don't suggest you do. The character of Indiana Jones always bored me, but I digress. That great line from that base movie applies to so many things. It especially applies to how I prioritize.

My first priority is usually food, which I suppose is hard to argue with being that it is necessary to survive. My next priority is usually whatever I'll get in the most trouble if I don't do. Will my teacher be more disappointed that I hand in a late essay than my boss being angry about my not filling out requisite paperwork? Will my parents be more angry if I stay up late than the amount my future will hurt if I don't make a competition deadline?

I mean, I'm not totally boring into work. Sometimes, even if risk outweighs rewards I'll still go out with friends. I am a teenager after all. But what doesn't make sense to most people is that I tend to prioritize work over school. Not that I don't think school isn't important or isn't worth my time. As much as I hate my school, it has had a great impact on my social skills, way of thinking, and my knowledge, especially my publications class. However, as long as I'm passing, I try to sleep and go to work and get paid. It's not a huge issue for me that I have less than a B- in AP Lit (which is weird for me because ELA is supposed to be my niche) but you know what? At the end of the day, I keep up with the lessons and my teachers' commentary and learn what everyone else is. Maybe I don't exercise what I'm learning for...any of my classes until I have to, but twenty years from now, am I really going to give a damn about the grade a teacher gave me that I can't place the face of anymore in the second term of my senior year? I seriously doubt I'll care six months from now.

I never really understood how much I need sleep until this year. I just hope I get better at my juggling act before I get to college.

Overdue

Deadlines are kind of an issue for me. Which is kind of ironic, being that I want to do something with journalism when I grow up.  In the eyes of the law, I'll be all grown up in eight months.  That's a little scary.

How is that I'm not old enough to smoke or drink or have intercourse or do adult things but I'm supposed to know what the hell I want to do with my career for the rest of my life?  Seriously, what kind of deadline is 18?  I'm supposed to know who I want to vote for for president, pay health insurance and be self sufficient, but I'm not self aware or mature or enough to dabble in a couple of vices?

18 is the biggest deadline of all for me.  Among school projects and work related things, becoming an adult is big.  It's bigger than graduating (which I could do in my sleep, and if you ask my former teachers Mr. Cross and Mr. Sacher, I pretty much am doing).  It has to do with the fact that not only am I supposed to be on track with a career and internship and experience, I'm also supposed to have one year of tuition saved and a plan to move out.

I don't mind all that; it has to happen sometime for me so it may as well happen now.  But I don't want to give up concerts and parties and friends and wearing fishnet gloves and Madonna-esque accouterments just because hey, you're an adult now.  But it's already starting to slip.  My Madonna-esque accoutrement isn't exactly professional wear for the office, and I'm already saying no to more and more social crap.  And I'll say it again, it's not like I had much of a social life anyway, so losing what I have to this, really sucks.

I'd like to, in the immortal words of John Mellencamp, hold on to sixteen for as long as I can.  Ideals are nice, aren't they?

If you want to do something right...

My AP Lit class has recently been experiencing some difficulty with group work.  In the last group project--a short satirical Great Expectations film--the most dramatic conflict dug up wounds from the bullying that went on freshman year.  The least dramatic was just lashing out at each other about alleged incompetence and laziness, in such a way that this group unanimously decided that no one in it ever wanted to work with each other again.

For the current project, a The Great Gatsby twenty minute dramatic performance, one group's fearless but overworked member basically took stabs at everyone in the group.  In the last project, it was sort of understandable because the groups were assigned.  But these groups were student picked, and were all made up of close friends.  People that sat with each other at lunch, held each other while they cried, and worked closely in the same editorial staff, were throwing daggers at their IQ scores and ability to keep up with deadlines.  All for a project being presented next week, that wasn't past due, that not a single person had done anything for besides outline so far.

These difficulties are probably due to a number of factors.  Our school has a little less than 700 children in it.  There are seventy five kids in the senior class, so the twenty that are in AP Lit were all more than familiar with each other and not in the friendliest way. There's been a lot of bullying, infighting, and clique switching and creating.  And I look at this and think wow, how unprofessional are we.  Aren't we supposed to be legal adults in less than a year?  Would this be tolerated in a workplace or risk termination?

I might be a bit of a hypocrite.  I myself cannot stand collaborating. I hate depending on others for basically anything.  I hate two conflicting but great ideas with no way to merge or two conflicting ideas where one is great forcing me to criticize a colleague.  And while my group member lashed out at the rest of us, I hated holding my tongue for the benefit of the team.

But at the end of the day, I've led group writing ventures outside of class and loved it.  And every single one of those Great Expectations films was creative and smart.  I have no doubt in my mind that respect for each other's piece of the work, the desire for the final product and the applause supersedes the disrespect my classmates and I shovel down each other's throats.  I want to be right about that.

Adequate/Hope

Assignment: One word that will define the rest of your senior year and why.

So far, the word that would probably describe my senior year so far is adequate.  And if I had to bet, I'd probably say it's going to define the remaining time I have in WJPS.  However, that doesn't mean I want it to stay that way.

As far as grades go, my first marking period grades were good, except one class.  Depending on how this week goes, the first half of the second marking period could either go exactly the same way or worse.  I have a time management issue. The college process wasn't as stressful as I believed it to be, especially since I only applied to CUNYs.  The SATs were meh; my score was solid.  The only better than adequate thing I really feel is better than adequate is working.  I work two jobs, one which I love with a passion, not that I could ever tell my coworkers that.

I would want the rest of my senior year to be described as hope.  College acceptance letters are supposed to start coming soon and I would like to get my GPA and SAT score up to NYU transfer requirements by the end of this year, as well as my Regents scores.  I plan for Queens for two and the NYU for the next two.

I haven't even thought about the social aspect of my senior year, except for finding my prom dress.  I lost my social life I think.  Not that I had much of one to begin with.  I do hope for more.  But going out requires money and all of mine is going towards tuition.  I hope to stay in touch with my friends after I leave here.

I hope to feel like I've accomplished something more than adequate before I leave this place.  I hope to be happy with what I've done and not just content.  But I need to do more than hope.  I need to work for what I want.