the whining i've been alluding to...

home just over three (now five) days and i'm already weary. i'm not myself here. i'm afraid a month at home will change me, and not for the better.

why don't i ever think of this place when i get homesick? how could i, even for an instant, in my worst two-all-nighters-in-one-week/body-failing/brain-collapsing misery, prefer work to studying?

if home is where you feel you belong, then this will forever be a place i like to visit.

i should be pursuing good projects, i should be growing. this is in no way consistent with that. at home this realization breaks my heart; at work, it frustrates me to tears.

i tried to assert some kind of existential freedom the other day at work. i learned the hard way you just can't have that in retail. i left for my break without telling anyone. it was an opportune time; i was really under the impression people just went as they found a chance. i got in the 'tangmobile and raced to borders, after a copy of the shipping news. i knew it would take longer than fifteen minutes. i didn't care. it felt so good - i felt in control of my life for the first time all week. i came back to work to find they'd all but put an apb out on me. i was grilled by my manager, which nearly drove me to tears. (you know how stupidly emotional i am.) ugh... that's why i hate my job. it's not really that bad (no worse than wisconsin); i just have no freedom. and i'm too immature to just suck it up for one month.

i'm working in the catering department of a gourmet market. (death to anyone who dares to call it a grocery store... or a high five.) it's not hard, i like the people i work with, i'm starting to get the hang of things. i don't know what my problem is. maybe i'm just lazy. i just don't like this structure. i prefer college where i know what i need to get done, and i do it on my own time. it's harder to work with and for other people. and it doesn't help that i'm scheduled to work 48 hours a week so that it seems at all moments i'm either asleep or at work. but i'm just a baby, really, don't pity me.

do you have any idea how many times a day, at work and at home, i feel an almost uncontrollable desire to get in my car and leave?

i guess i complain about everything that's going on at the moment and think most fondly of everything that's not. but i do miss marietta. i feel like myself there, i feel like the people there enjoy my company, understand me, respect me. here i'm either something else for my mom to yell at or just another person in a white chef's coat - which has another person's name on it! in marietta, what i do matters. here it doesn't, not even to me. this is a worthless month, wasted time. for this month, i'm stagnant, if not regressing. it's a very, very bad project indeed.

i always seem to need an escape, no matter where i am. the escape from one place always needs escaping from itself... this must be my greatest character flaw.

well, enough of being a whiny dork, i say! i have a day off tomorrow and i don't have to go in till 11:30 the next day! it's time to claim that freedom, get in a car and drive... to a shopping mall. :/ i wanted to make presents for everyone, but with this job there's just no way i'll find time. this is my last day off before christmas, so its also probably the last good shopping day. then in the afternoon i'm going to get together with mel and rachel for more shopping and sibling togetherness... it will be good. somehow i will make the most of that day.

so i'm reading the shipping news, because i found out it's assigned for my concepts of gender english course next semester and i thought i'd get a head start. oh wow. once you get past the fact that it's not written in correct english (that takes a couple chapters for a person like me), it is so incredibly wonderful, real, and original. i am looking forward to studying it in depth next semester. good stuff. i want to write a novel in my own made-up language now. my writing is so very me and not quite right anyway, i could do it. i'd fill my book with sentences like 'i made you smile and happy.' hmm, maybe for next nanowrimo.

so, i'm feeling okay at the moment. that's probably only because no one i know is in my vicinity. but i will make the most of these moments as they present themselves to me. i will read good books, i will enjoy the holidays, i will stick to my path, i will try not to let my confining reality get to me. just a month, right? i won't count the minutes, lani, but i'll pray they pass quickly...

While every line speaks the language of love, It never held the meaning I was thinking of. And I can't decide over right or wrong - I guess sometimes you need the place where you belong.
Beth Orton