Slacker Girl

Oh, this day just dragged by. Time is definitely an abstract when you have things you have to do before you can do the things you want to do. My job is mind-numbingly dull, and my mind was all awhirl with things I wanted to write about in future posts.

Before I go any further, I want to thank my personal guru, Vahn. He's the one who sent me here in the first place, and has patiently answered all the dumb questions I had about getting started and setting things up the way I wanted them (for now, at least). And since I'm waiting to get a little more experience and posts written before I unleash this blog on an unknowing public, he's one of a select group of readers I have at this point. I owe you a beer the next time you're in town, dude.

I live about 5 blocks from the local university, and school started today. Getting out of my neighborhood this morning to go to work was not a fun experience. The first few days of school are always a free-for-all, with students madly scrambling for every available parking area within walking distance. Argh. Off-street parking is so my friend....

I keep telling myself I'll go back to school, I'll complete that degree. When, I have no idea. I have even less of an idea what to major in now than I did as a confused 17 year old filling out college applications. Business? I have no interest in the corporate world, but it's what's paying the bills right now. (Just barely.) English? My old standby, but the last thing the world needs is a retail employee with aspirations to win the Pulitzer Prize. Psychology? No, that won't work. You need graduate work to actually do anything, and I'll be in my seventies by that point.

It was so much easier when I was little. Back in elementary school, when they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I knew. In a room full of would-be firemen and doctors and baseball players, I was the lone wanna-be herpetologist. The teacher had to go look it up. (For those readers who are equally confused, a herpetologist is a scientist specializing in the subject of reptiles.) I had a big thing for snakes. At seven, I read about snakes. I wrote about snakes. I begged my mother to let me get a pet snake. Mom, who has a phobia of snakes, looked me in the eye and said, "You are not my child."

So I never got my snake, and had to be happy with goldfish. I got older, and discovered other subjects to hold my attention. Too many, as a matter of fact. My problem has never been figuring out what interests me; it's been more of a problem of what doesn't interest me. Over the course of my high school years and what little college I managed to finish, I considered the following careers for at least five minutes: education (English and music), journalism, radio broadcasting, nursing, medicine, psychology, zoology, photography, technical writing, sociology, philosophy, and creative writing. And I'm not even taking the unrealistic pipedreams into account. I will never be saying "I'd like to thank the Academy..." for my acting ability.

My past job experience is even weirder. Convenience store clerk, bartender, secretary (for a zoo, of all things...I got to feed the snakes every week. Not your average typing and filing job.), brokerage cashier, postal and packaging clerk, data entry drone, nurse's aide, amusement park food service employee, auto assembly line worker, telemarketer, and more retail positions than I care to think about.

Time has not narrowed down my interests. It keeps getting worse. With the discovery of Blogger.com, I've kicked around the idea of learning HTML several times today. I find myself enthralled watching one of my friends compose music on his computer (I have a strange thing for watching people work in creative fields) and wish that Cakewalk had existed when I was taking music theory classes. I found myself swapping drink recipes with the bartender at Uno's last night. And of course, there's the ever-looming novel in progress.

WHAT THE HELL DO I WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW UP??? (Assuming that I ever grow up, that is.)

Too much to think about tonight. I'll save career development for another time. I'm going dancing tonight, so all I'm concerned about is finding my boots and the right shade of black to wear to the club. Someday I'll figure out what color my parachute is.

I've got a sneaking suspicion that it's plaid.