Nappy Yew Hear!

Every year I fall into the same trap, but I can’t help dwelling on the year to come as I invariably spend my New Year’s Eve the same way I spend most of them: alone. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, I might prefer it to all the New Years I’ve spent with others. This year has something very odd, though, lurking about it, which is the assurance of change. Generally, most years don’t come with a guaranteed life-changing event, but graduating certainly seems like one of those things.

What have I got to do? Pass five classes. How many college classes have I failed? None. How many have I passed? They haven’t taught me to count that high. What is the likelihood I’ll fail these? Essentially zero. It’s pretty guaranteed.

I suppose I could go to law school, you know, put on the I’m-going-to-enter-the-corporate-world-and-really-change-the-world-for-the-better-from-the-inside hat, but we all know I’m too lazy to do that, and even after seeing pictures of a cute girl who goes to law school with a bunch of cute girls law school still doesn’t sound good. Graduate school, for now, is not in the picture, unless I decide very soon to immediately start working toward being a teacher. But rash decisions never pan out for me, so perhaps I should deliberate something so weighty as my future career, or perhaps occupation, for longer than a few scant months of idealizing the time off and reveling in the fact that I would still, in some capacity, go to school everyday.

So, finally, I resolve to leave the comfortable, reassuring teat of education, where I have been the pick of the litter, the brute who gets the most with the least effort, grade-wise at least, and join life as an actual adult. It’s probably not a surprise that a twenty-five year old undergrad has accomplished little in the real world, despite actually living in something like it for a year and a half. It should also be no surprise that the same twenty-five year old undergrad has no clue what life is beyond A’s on the last pages of essays. So I wonder to myself, what kind of job could I get? What exactly will my twenty-five thousand dollar piece of paper and the twenty-five years’ spent dicking around while getting it earn me? I’m really not sure. I know I want to go back to California (there’s a number of reasons, ranging from better driving conditions, to better fast food, to the existence of extant friends), but how will I get by? It’d be nice if I could get a job “using” my degree, afford a decent place to live and have some time to write. Actually, that’s really all I want.

So I guess what I have to do in the next six months, aside from nothing but reading French, writing English, and speaking framed artwork, is figure out logistics like where to live and work, along with how to get there. It would also be really helpful if I could just learn to photosynthesize (food for those who respire is expensive), but I’m not sure an English major will be able to figure that out. I also plan to keep writing a lot, and in fact I’m working on a method for organizing and outlining my novel, which will hopefully help things along, or at least cement some of the book’s major aspects enough that I can start writing early drafts. Well, that’s it for now, new poems or stories coming soon.

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