Saturday, June 21, 2008

I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?

So, I'm a college graduate. Instead of instantly finding fame, fortune, or at least a passable job, I've been crashing with my parents and doing some serious navel-gazing. This last part hasn't been too difficult, since I've gained a full forty pounds since I started college and now have what my friend affectionately calls a "Food Fetus," a gut the likes of which Larry the Cable Guy would examine with boozy jealousy. Seriously. Freshman year I was a hottie. My physical deformities notwithstanding, I seriously haven't been this directionless in my entire life. When you're in college you know what to do- the steps are clear, the options are elucidated and you know what path a choice will take you down. Now it's the "real world" and all the shit that I've talked about doing is a possibility- but the only one who can make it happen is me, and I'm not exactly kicking my ass about getting it done.

So since I've been home I've gotten myself about eighty percent unpacked- there are still two boxes of books out in the garage, and those have to wait to move in until we resolve the bookshelf situation in my room. The situation being, there aren't any. Or rather, there isn't space on the bookshelves that are in here for my many copies of the complete works of Dorothy L. Sayers and the ouevre of Nora Roberts. My room is a strange hybrid of me when I was 14 and my mom's stuff, with my computer on my grandmother's desk and my cardboard standup of Legolas standing in front of my mom's collection of back issues of Food and Wine. I haven't done anything to this room since I was 16. I still had a Hanson poster up in my closet, for crying out loud.

I feel wierdly stagnated. I feel, in the words of the fabulous Daisy Steiner, like "there's something I've gotta be, I just don't know what it is! I'm like a rabbit, trapped in the headlights of the twenty-first century!" Well, not quite, but mostly. I want write but every time I sit down to actually do some writing it's like I have a mental block that prevents me from putting anything down on the page. I'm living with my parents, which is awkward and horrible because I feel like they're watching me, all the time, looking to see if I'm horribly depressed or sad or whatever. My mom thinks I'm a mess, and I probably look a mess to her but I'm mostly a mess because she won't stop insinuating that I'm an alcoholic.

Yeah, it's an awesome time here in my house... on the whole, it could be so much worse. It's not so bad living here- it's free, and they've stopped freaking out (mostly) if I come in late, and after I yelled at my mom she has stopped mentioning outright that I need to lose weight. (Small victories, people. Small victories.) Tomorrow I'm house managing, which will get me a little bit o' cash, and I hear back next week about the gigs at Exxon-Mobil and at Borders, both of which will also get me cash money. I'm going to apply for a fulbright, which my friend Claire has promised to help me with. It's nice to have goals. Maybe now I can get those last two boxes unpacked.

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