The Unfortunate Annual Transient

This is my sojourn from Seattle back to the Midwestern motherland. Speckled enamel coffee cups, humidity, fireflies and confronting my addiction to change. Where will this one lead...

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Today I'm Ally Sheedy

This morning I drank an "NR-Ja"... an energy drink with red, yellow and green stripes with a small, eyeless Rastafarian at the bottom declaring, "I know it!" Know what, I wonder? It, man. All I knew after drinking it was that it tastes like watered-down Red Bull and slightly jarred me from my late morning coma.

I'm in one of those moods. I don't want to read about HIV/AIDS policy. I don't want to teach English tonight. I don't want to go out, but staying in sounds like a chore. I don't want to deal with anyone around me. I don't know what I want to do with myself career-wise, though I know I want a job with health insurance and paid vacations. When I was 18-years-old, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted, and even though what that was changed over the proceeding years, my certainty did not. But now I'm 25, generally jobless with a Generic Liberal Arts Degree (aren't you GLAD you still owe $25,000 in student loans for this?) in Psychology, and I don't even want to think about it. About any of it. I just want to have Jason make me dinner, eat it in bed, and fall promptly into a lazy, indulgent sleep. Yesterday I was Molly Ringwald, and today I'm Ally Sheedy. I need a Mary Kay makeover and a date with the school jock. That will give me some direction in life.

Sigh, I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I promise. Just apathetic. I really just want to sit at this computer and read Salon archives and watch Apple trailers all afternoon. Jason claims when I turned 25, it was if a bomb went off in my brain, and I suddenly felt old, adult, with all the pressures and anxieties that go with that identity. Credit ratings, spider veins, IRA funds, calcium supplements. A steady job. I think back to the ambitions I used to have....to be a social worker, to be a psychologist, to be a lawyer, to run a restaurant, to study policy.... do I still like any of them enough to make a committment? That's what I'm really afraid of: committment. Saying, "This is what I want to do" is a statement of committment to work towards something, to invest in something. Maybe I'll wake up one morning when I'm 43, wonder what the hell have I been doing for the past 15 years, and run off after a series of unfortunate but hilarious events, and discover my talent and passion for something incredible, like building furniture or raising bisen or surgery.

Sorry if this one's a downer. If I were in the States, I'd go get a haircut or buy a new pair of pants. Consumerism - now that's being productive!

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey court---I hear you, totally. the thing about turning 25 rings true for me; the past six months I feel like i've constantly been struggling for Adulthood and either just not acheiving it, or achieving it but feeling totally freaked out about it. and I also feel like anytime I have a life crisis, my first instinct is to get a hair cut.

just so you know, though, I love your blog. it's always nice to live vicariously through someone abroad.

8:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe tomorrow you'll feel like Anthony Michael Hall. Then you'll be fine.

8:51 PM  
Blogger Court said...

Actually, today I have to spend my work hours typing up an outline on China and India's national AIDS programs, then go home and do laundry, so I feel like Andrew McCarthy. Stuck with all the shitty parts.

I love reading your blog too Katie. I especially like when you describe the quiet, happy moments. You have a real penchant for it.

12:44 AM  
Blogger Court said...

Hmmm. I said penchant, but I meant finesse or something. Got to call on OED before I use big words.

12:47 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home