saturday

Today was the first day I feel like I have my life back to myself again. That is, every waking second isn't spent doing exam stuff / worried about exam stuff / feeling guilt for NOT doing or worrying about exam stuff.

If this is what having kids is like, you can forget it.

This morning Seth had to work so I woke up, went to the gym, then stopped at the drug store and the farmers market on the way home (NOTE: I know I talk about the farmers market a lot and it's probably annoying but I really love it and am somehow still not adjusted to it being in my life. It just makes me really happy. Plus we didn't really go over the winter, and now there are summer fruits and flowers and seafood. Yay!). Anyway, now I'm home drinking coffee and watching dvr shows from the week and not doing anything and I loooove it. I feel like I did when I first moved here, like I have all the time I need to get centered and explore the city and the weather is gorgeous and everything just feels...good.

After three days of house confinement, writing for five hours stretches at a time, I finished my written exam questions and got them turned in to the right people in the right format with hopefully limited typos and incoherency. And basically the only thing left before I finish my degree is my oral exam on Thursday (which I can't really prep for, and so I'm not letting myself stress over) and revising my papers (which I still haven't gotten back, despite that "good news" email last week).

The biggest sign that things are really almost done? I also started applying for jobs. Real, post-school, possibly career-related jobs. All the most exciting ones are for staff positions at universities, who are all suffering massive cut-backs and layoffs and are therefore now ridiculously competitive. I think I've applied to nearly every department, from the office of the dean of arts and sciences to the dental school. I also applied to work at the university bookstore, the public library, jenny craig, and nordstrom. My panic is making me desperate.

Which begs the question...what do I want to do? All of my friends finishing my program this year either want to be professors or housewives (and they will be), and I'm sort of, meh, about either of those. So I've been thinking it over, and I do that thing they always tell you to do. I made a list of what I would do, if I had unlimited time, money, connections, and ability:

1. Travel the world and blog about it. Or be one of those food network people who gets to travel and eat for a living. Or maybe not, since it didn't do Rachel Ray's body any favors, am I right? Fuck, she's still a millionaire.
2. Open a used bookstore / dog bakery. While I buy shoes online all day. I haven't really worked this one out yet.
3. Work at an animal shelter and also be a foster home for dogs who are having trouble getting adopted. I KNOW.
   
4. Open a winery that also hosts concerts and charity events. Travel to Italy and Argentina a lot, you know, for reasearch. You know, be rich and drunk.
   
5. Write a book. About what? I guess about me, well, fictional me, and my fictional life and people in it. Or maybe about fictional me and my year apart from fictional Seth that now sort of feels like an alternate universe I visited in another life. Or about life and grad school, and how messed up grad students are, or how messed up religious people are, or how messed up the grad students who study religion are. Sort of like Then We Came To The End, but about neurotic 28-year-olds with no social skills instead of neurotic 40-somethings who work in an office with no social skills. It's a really good book. Anyway, like I said, if I had the ability.

Basically, I'm realizing that I have no idea what I want for the rest of my life. Which I know is fine, but it means I don't know what kind of job I should be looking for, or what kind of worker I am. I've never had the same job for more than a few months, unless it was part-time, and that's not the same, I know. Even when I went from part-time to full-time at the pathology lab, the difference was like night and day (literally, because I went from the 5-11pm shift to the 8-5 shift, and all the people I used to work with on the night shift were coming on as I was leaving, so different co-workers, different boss, the whole thing). p.s. the night shift always has the more fun people.

I guess my point is that I know the running joke is that my degree is kinda pointless for someone not pursuing a Ph.D. And not that the last two years were a waste, but...I don't know. I'm just sad that once this new-found freedom high wears off, I'm going to be broke, and selling handbags at the mall. Not that there's anything wrong with that. That is, if they even hire me. Did I mention that Nordstrom has a 10+ page personality assessment included in their job application? If I didn't fail that, at least I'd get a store discount.