you're the calm when my world is crashing

Bush ducks flying shoes.

Oh, I'll bet Jon Stewart is having an absolute field day.

On another note..
People like to ask questions, especially about college. How do you like San Diego? What do you do for fun? How is your living situation? How are your roommates? What classes are you taking next quarter? Where are you living next year?

Do you like to work?

I found myself at a loss for words. I'm not sure anyone has ever asked me that before. Do I enjoy working? I mean, I certainly would not mind if someone handed me a fat check to cover me for the rest of my life. I actually had a dream about a week ago where...I went to Alcatraz (I've never really been) and they had some sort of raffle going on with ticket entries, and I won seven hundred million dollars.

In my dream, I was so incredibly relieved. I thought, I'm set. I'll never have to pay for tuition again. My parents can go to China. I can buy a ton of shit. Funny how we correlate "shit" to good stuff. "That's good shit." .. Wait, there's no such thing as good shit. I mean, there's bad, and then worse, but it really only goes downhill.

Anyway. I digress. Do I enjoy work? I loved working at the DC last year, but the toll it took on me made me aware that I needed to leave this year. I was sad about the decision, but there were too many factors for me to continue. Being at Geisel used to be incredibly boring at times, and some of my work leaders still intimidate me and probably always will, but it is much more chill, and I appreciate the ability to get home and not have to face an enormous desire to shower after every shift.

Back to the question he asked. Do I like to work? Wherever I end up, I do always find myself enjoying it, or some aspects of it. For instance, the water spot had downs, but it also had ups--like the customers who came in smiling. Sometimes the smallest thing would make my day. Geisel sucked ass when I first started, but I like it for what it is now. I don't think I'm at the point where I look forward to my next shift, but I no longer dread it.

I ended up explaining that working at this point in my life is something that I would avoid if I had the choice.

That about summed it up for the conversation, but I have so much more I want to say.

Alan disagreed when I said that I don't think anybody ever likes to work. But I don't think I put that clearly enough. I don't want to ever be lying around on my ass all day...BUT. I also do not want to work out of necessity. I want to be able to enjoy my occupation, make a living off of it, but also make enough to be secure. Hell, I'd rather be secure and work for fun.

But I don't like relying on my next paycheck to meet the due date for the bills.

It's too much anxiety. I also dislike borrowing. I'm doing what I need to, but that doesn't mean I want to.

Okay. Anyway, I think that's enough about money matters for tonight. On to my next topic: why do I enjoy college so much more?

I hadn't quite put my finger on it until recently: the accumulation of personal property.

I have my own room for the very first time in my life this year.

And I love it.

Call me spoiled; I have never experienced so much freedom in my life. In the past, I have always rushed to turn off my alarm in the morning because I was afraid of waking up others. Consequently, it gave me less snooze time and put me at a higher risk of oversleeping or running late.

But being in my own room is a completely different lifestyle. I feel like everything is much more calm. I've always been ridiculously messy, so I was curious about what kind of a room I would have when it was all mine.

Let me just say, I think it is spotless.

I mean, there's junk in places. But there's an incredible amount of space. How did I ever live without it?

It makes me wonder if I will ever return to Fremont for a permanent stay.

I'm not sure how to explain, but I will try. Sharing last year was different from sharing in Fremont. In the dorm, I had the lofted bed in a triple, which means my territory was confined to an area of square footage the size of an XL-twin mattress pad. My desk and wardrobe were under my bed, and my roommates both had closets and bigger desks. Yeah, I got the shit end. In some ways it was better, not having things scattered. I didn't mind, really, because I knew I had the least amount of crap than the other two. It could have turned out worse. I almost ended up with the top bunk and the area beneath the loft. Boy, that would have tripled my bitchiness. In some ways, it was neat that I could lean over my bed and throw stuff on my desk if need be. I utilized it well, I think; my ladder became a bookshelf and the metal frame became a magnet board for notes.

Sharing at home, however--there is no clear line of division. Can I take that bed tonight? Sure. Not that it always worked out--sometimes we wanted the same thing. Sometimes the reasoning was illogical. Sometimes it was just inconvenient.

Bottom line, things did not belong to me. My grandma moved in during my senior year of high school. I started sleeping in my parents' bedroom, but I never quite moved out--I still had clothes in a quarter of the closet and in the drawers. My stuff was still there, and scattered around the house, as it has been all my life.

Oh yeah, I've also never had a desk.

There are desks in my house. Tables. I have had desks to work on, in the past, but they usually became crowded very quickly with junk, because they were never just mine.

I never realized how extremely important it is to have a desk. For me, anyway.

It's funny, I've realized that personal property and space are the two factors (or one, if you want to call them the same name) that have probably affected me the most in terms of independence. Whenever I went to the library to do homework last year, if I was working at a big table, I would spread out. I mean out. I wanted to open every resource that I would need and have them all simultaneously available. And whenever someone sitting across the table put their homework down and it was too close to mine, it would make me feel claustrophobic. Internally. I get nervous. I don't say anything because I think I get enough weird points as it is, and I know exactly how strange it sounds to say "Can you move your sheet of paper away from mine?" I mean, I could certainly move my own if it really bothers me that much.

It took me a while to realize that my roommates *didn't spread out quite as much as I did. They noticed, too. I mean, they know that I like to spread my work out. They probably don't know that I'm mentally freaking out when I don't have a blank half-foot radius around the circle of papers I've created that surround myself.

I do have a point. I think that this is a result of my upbringing. For most of my life, homework was done on the floor. On the sofa. On my lap. On the bed.

Not on the desk.

Moving on to personal property. I was super excited about college because I was getting stuff that was going to be mine, and nobody else's. I got my laptop. A desk lamp. A printer.

Bedsheets.

I don't think anybody has ever been more enthusiastic about getting their first bedsheets than I was when I ordered my special xl-twin bedsheets from whatever that college site was. I gave them severe, articulate thought. I narrowed down the options I liked. I thought about the color scheme. I liked the orange, but then I thought, this is too loud. They should be peaceful, calm. Serene.

//4.4.2012: noticed this was in my drafts, unpublished. decided to publish and lost the original creation date. my best guess is 2009, sometime in the spring. so I'll stick it in here.