Options and Contentment

Okay, first of all, I have to tell you about my lovely weekend! This past weekend I was able to have the honor of seeing my best friend play in her senior recital (she’s a piano major) and we got lots of time to go shopping and eat Thai food. It was just an awesome weekend. Also, her (actually down-to-earth and very sweet) sorority sisters welcomed me right in with their hall and sat with me during the recital and basically I feel like I made about 25 new friends this weekend. They were all super excited that I was engaged, even though they didn’t know me, and it was great to feel instantly brought in by a great group of girls. The bottom line is that my bestie is awesome and an incredible pianist and has great taste in friends (I mean, obviously!).

Now for the think-y stuff.

Even though I’ve only actually been back in my own house for about an hour an a half, I’m beginning to feel some anxiety again. Yes, a lot of it has to do with wedding planning, but most of it has to do with things I can’t control – people who I know will or won’t be willing to attend, the distance between us and my amazing photographer of an aunt (leaving us with only one weekend as an option for engagement photos by her, conflicting with other plans), and the fact that I have to just nail down a date and run. I’ll be touring some more reception sites this week (and hopefully choosing one) and I’m just hoping I can be guided to know when all of my upcoming decisions are correct. For example, I really hope it’s as easy as falling head-over-heels for a venue that seems too good to be true and they just happen to only have an opening on one of the two main dates we’ve been considering.

This brings up a whole philosophical discussion and struggle about whether or not people are happier with the more choices they have. Personally, I don’t think so. I firmly believe that more choices and options lead to dissatisfaction, second-guessing, and discontent. I’ve even read a couple studies that have backed this up.

Another example of this that happened today is that I submitted a take-home final exam for one of my classes. Two days early! Initially, I was all, “Go, me!!” but then I thought, I had more time. Maybe I should have proof read it again. Maybe I should have checked my math. Maybe I should have added more to the essays. It’s not like I was rushed. I could have done something different. When I submit assignments right on time, I feel more able to accept the fact that there’s nothing else I could have done – that I did what I did and had to submit it when I did. Having extra time makes me feel so anxious and like any points I get marked down are just all the more shameful and ridiculous because I could have theoretically put more time into it and should have (theoretically) no excuse to get any point at all taken off. It’s not like this for in-class exams because the moment the test starts, there’s a sense of calm I get when I know there is nothing else I can do – no cramming, no studying, no flashcards. I know what I know and I’ve done what I can and the only thing that is left is to answer the questions I know the answer to. But take-home tests, with all of their glorious benefits, still have that subtle, strange different layer of pressure, because they’re take-home.

I don’t know – am I the only one like this?

Put all of these feelings on top of getting to plan the biggest party I’ll ever throw, and there are so many decisions and different ways everything could go. I have to learn a new coping mechanism for making decisions other than “well, I finished it just before the deadline so it’s not like I had any more time to make it perfect.” This contentment strategy will not fly in the real world, and planning my wedding is my first big taste of it.

Really, I plan to commit to just sitting and writing any time I feel like I have to talk about or debate different decisions in my head (or when I’m laying awake trying to figure it all out in my head). Like, right now I need to go type up a specific conversation with myself about photography sessions and dates. I obviously also call my mom and friends when I need it, but there are so many decisions where there’s no real right or wrong way to do things, and they can’t really make the calls for me.

Do you experience this dissatisfaction with increased options? What’s your go-to decision-making strategy?

Just so we didn’t go the whole weekend without getting pictures together, I made sure to wake her up with some before I left!

The Anxious Mind

Sometimes it just hits me.

The deadlines, the lab reports, the appointments and social engagements, the performances, rehearsals, concerts and homework, working and the grief and the guilt of not being able to tackle my own personal agenda. I can’t do everything I want to and I can’t avoid getting burnt out. All of the pressure (from school, work, myself) is a lot, especially when I have my own emotional mess to already try to cope with and sort out in addition to everything else. I’m trying to not let myself have to ask for grace or help or anything special. I don’t know if this is because I feel like I shouldn’t or if it’s because I’m scared I’ll just appreciate that too much and take advantage of it and let myself fall behind. There’s the part of my brain that tells me I can do everything just fine, and I don’t know whether or not the part of me saying it’s too much is being lazy. 

When I was really little (like kindergarten and first grade) I developed this habit of lying for attention. I don’t remember if I’ve discussed this before, but I was awful. It started when I told my kindergarten class I was 6 years old like everyone else when I was really 5. Well, when my mom brought the whole class cupcakes to celebrate my 6th birthday, I was outed. Somehow, I didn’t learn my lesson and the whole thing got progressively worse until it all culminated in me telling my first grade teacher about how my baby brother had got a hold of some matches and my family was now dealing with the loss of his life and our apartment.

I don’t have a baby brother and I never did. No fires burnt down our home. To this day I don’t really have any idea why I even said that. My teacher immediately contacted the principal and my parents and I don’t even remember what happened after that except I’m sure my teacher thought I was a delinquent dummy or something.

Recently, I’ve noticed that the embarrassment of knowing I had that habit at some point makes me feel guilty about bringing anything up that might bring me any more attention than usual or be a reason I may get any special treatment. I don’t want to tell my professors about my grandmother’s passing because I’m scared they (and I) will think I’m just milking it to get special treatment and extensions. I don’t know if this is normal but it’s an issue in my head that just makes everything fuzzy and makes me anxious because I don’t feel like I certainly know when I need something and when I’m crossing a line.

I know this isn’t a fun post and it’s weird and personal and (ironically) all about me (when I’m sitting here worried about getting attention). It’s just what I need to say today and blogging is about being vulnerable sometimes, right? It’s hard.

My choir director recently addressed anxiety and depression and he told us to break every little thing on our minds down into the smallest pieces of a task we can make them. One quote that popped in my head was “Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is get up when the alarm goes off.“ (which I have not been successfully doing much at all lately). But he took it further and put it this way: When our alarm goes off, just tell yourself that you’re just going to put your feet on the floor. You don’t have to commit to getting up and walking to the shower and if you want to lay back down once your feet are on the floor, you totally can. Just put your feet on the floor and make that decision after. And proceeding on: Are you going to decide to lay back down, or are you going to decide to stand up? You can lay back down once you stand up, but just stand. And it goes on.

Another thing I’ve been focusing on anytime my guilt radar goes off or I find one thing or another to feel anxious or nervous or sad about is just to tell myself it’s okay. It’s okay. My family generally eats rather healthily, but when my mom came home with swiss rolls and Lucky Charms, she tried apologizing or saying she shouldn’t have. I laughed and told her it’s totally okay. Heck, all I’ve been eating lately is cereal and canned soup (and my morning coffee). Now isn’t the time in our lives to hold our personal goals of calorie counting or regularly meditating or keeping the house clean or getting 8 solid hours of restful sleep every night or going out with people as much as we used to. It’s not easy, but every time it comes up, I just have to breathe, let it go, and make the next choice.

If you’ve ever experienced anxiety and depression, you can probably definitely relate to one of my all-time favorite blogger’s post, Adventures in Depression. (Don’t worry, there’s pictures! And you may even chuckle.) And the Part Two to that post really helps put things into perspective about when people try to talk to you about how to “fix being depressed.”

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The post that was harder to write than I thought, and is a little more personal than I’d like.

My sister has got it figured out. Her first job was a summer internship at the place my dad works at. In the Fall, they asked her to stay with them, and soon offered her to be full-time. She never had to put in applications all over town, or go job hunting on a rainy day, running into every store in strip malls asking if they’re hiring. She moved out as soon as she turned eighteen. Like I could ever imagine affording that. She just got married at age twenty in March of 2010. She never had to go through a post-graduation, pre-anything-meaningful-in-life, quarter-life crisis or anything. Not only is her life fulfilling, simplistic, and everything she’d always wished it would be, it’s everything I wished my life would be.

There she is, happily married, has always had an enjoyable and rewarding job, loving being a wife and cooking and working out and trying new things, driven, and being exactly where she feels she is meant to be. And here I am. I graduated High School last summer, and then went away to a wonderful school that I loved, only to be flipped on my head. My Vocal Performance major, which had been all I had known, ended up not being what I loved or thrived doing. Linguistics, my new focus, was not offered as a degree at that school. Also, it turned out that I actually felt limited and trapped on campus rather than the “Go, be free and independent!” that freshman year of college is supposed to promise.

So I came home. I transferred to my local community college, taking some courses that will work towards my degree (nothing specialized, unfortunately – just Spanish, film, English Comp, etc.). Now, I NEVER imagined myself being here. I still kind of can’t believe I’m here. Unlike my sister, I am exactly where I never hoped or thought or imagined I would be. I’m going to community college. I’m working a part-time job, to make money, to buy gas, to drive to my part-time job. I then come home, where I live with my parents, and put up with three obnoxious, past-their-cute-prime, eat-my-favorite-articles-of-clothing dogs. I have a car that thinks going into the shop once a week is a spa treatment – seriously, it’s been in the shop three or four times in one month.  I didn’t just come back home to figure out what to do next, or to work and get my degree, I came home to an unfriendly not-so-welcome into the grown-up world of court dates, used car shopping, boss issues, and realizing just how unaffordable and tedious being a grown up is.

I’ve been feeling a heck of a lack of drive. There’s no diploma I’m working for, or a career I can’t wait to start and do things with, or anything like that. The next thing in life I’m really looking forward to or excited about is getting married, starting a family, being a good housewife and mom and cooking and laughing. But it’ll be quite some time until I (or my significant other) can afford a wedding and place to live. And so it’s turned to myself. The only thing I can think to set goals with is to work out X many times a week, or tone up this or that part of my body. But even that gets old and tiring and discouraging.

My mom’s been bugging me about getting back into extracurricular activities that I loved in high school, which are not as easy or simple to get involved with or that have a point as when they’re run by your school (for example, working towards a recital or concert or opening night of the Spring musical). There is an audition for a play I’m going to do, but that’s in June (and as I’m writing this, it just hit me that maybe my week away in Georgia to see my best friend in July might hinder that involvement. I know a lot of times, they want some one who will be at every rehearsal – especially for any role bigger than “Chorus Dancer #6” or “Frightened Inmate #3”). I’ve been encouraged to call my high school voice teacher to begin lessons again – which I probably will, and I’ll enjoy it, but it’ll just be to pass the time. I know now that I don’t want a vocal arts career and so I don’t know if I’ll see much reason to it other than to just further improve my skills for… what, exactly?

When I put in a lot of job applications around town when I first transferred back home, two places were interested: a sandwich shop in the town right down the road, and the Cafe I work at now, which offered me an interview and job sooner than the former had. That being said, the sandwich shop did call me twice about an interview, but I had to tell them I just couldn’t add on another job with being in school and already working part time. However, now that school is over, I called them and asked about an interview to possibly add it on as a second job. But they seemed hesitant about reconciling my current sporadic schedule and about the number of people they already have that will discontinue their employment there in the fall when school starts up again (I’ll probably just go on with my current job and school schedule, like I did last semester), and that they would call me back. And I don’t know if I really want them to ask me to come in. I don’t know if I want a second job because I might as well make money if I have time on my hands, or if I think it could be fun or if I actually don’t want it but for some reason think it might be enough of a change in my life to make things interesting. I might have a new goal of learning how things worked and the recipes and the menu. I just don’t know.

So this is where I’m left. To all of you who have it figured out and are happy and fulfilled with your lives, congratulations. You’re very fortunate to be in your position and I hope it continues to give you many years of contentment. And for all those like me, I’m sure we’ll get through and something exciting and meaningful will happen to us eventually.

And I’m just trying to figure out where to go from here.

I’m too young for this.

So, a while ago I decided to grow out my hair, which had been in a bob for a while. But we all hit that stage of being bored with our hair and wanting to do something. I couldn’t cut it short again, and I didn’t want to dye it because I’m blonde and if I had then the color would have oh-so-ungracefully faded away and left a stain. So I went and got a dyed extension. That way I could have that bit of funkiness and then take it out whenever without having to worry about permanent effects.

Anyway, I just re-dyed it. The purple color the lady at the salon had done had faded a lot.  I just got a drug store hair dyeing kit and the color is even more the shade I originally wanted it than ever. Aaaand it makes me want to dye my whole head that purple. Really.

Even though I’m only eighteen, I’ve been struggling lately with grown-up things – particularly since I just got my first speeding ticket. Things like points on my driver’s license, court hearings, living to work/working to live, and being generally dissatisfied and discontent with my life all around have been sitting heavily in my head. Just sloshing around in there. And I just absentee voted for my city’s school board because I’ll be out of town next week.

Overall, I have a really great life. But when compared to how I want my life to be, it’s not close at all. I know this is how life tends to be, but I think it’s even more poignant because I’m eighteen and am now legally an “adult.”  But I still feel like a teenager or kid just pretending to be grown up. And what really frustrates me the most is that it’s never going to change. I don’t see a way my life will ever be what I want it to be. I’m going to school full-time and working part-time (soon to be full-time in the summer). All just to have enough money to buy gas so I can drive to work and go to school.

Back to the hair-dyeing thing, my main reason to not just do whatever with my hair I like is my boss. Or any boss, really. Where on earth could I work with purple hair? And I love painting my nails and doing my hair and dressing nice, but I can only paint my nails a neutral shade for work. I have to have my hair up and in a hat for work (which makes it difficult to recover into a good hair day if I go anywhere after), and I have to wear just a too-big black t-shirt and jeans and sneakers. For work.

And you know what? I don’t ever see it getting better. Because I’ll eventually graduate and then I’ll just be working. And having to worry about a house payment or rent. Or kids. and their school. Which means I’ll probably have to get a career job and have quotas and clients. And a cable bill. And of course a credit card bill, which I’ll probably have to apply for pretty soon. And I just don’t understand how NOT having a credit card doesn’t equal having good credit. I mean, if you don’t even put yourself in situations where you need a credit card and just be responsible and pay with cash or debit, then shouldn’t you get a default A+ or whatever? But no. Sadly, society isn’t that sensible.

I feel like I’m having a mid-life crisis. Which is really bad, because if it is mid-life, then I won’t even live to be forty. Mid-teen crisis? Whatever. And I need to fix it, but I don’t see how except to keep playing Zelda on my gameboy advance in my spare time, and holding onto that harmless shred of my childhood.

Don’t Get Me Wrong…

I really like my job. Really. But what I don’t like as much is people. And there are just a few different kinds of people that come in all the time that drive me a a little crazy.

1. The girls who come in wearing very obvious self-tanner and huge Snookie-poofs and order very complicated and picky salads, and then their boyfriends order an actual sandwich and then they say “ugh, I can’t believe you ordered that, how can you eat all that?” in a whiney, obnoxious tone.

2. People who think they deserve everything there and own it all already just because they have some sort of remote connection to the owner. Or they know his first name.

3. Anyone who wears way too much perfume or cologne.

4. People who hand their sandwiches back to me and say, “Didn’t I say to grill this???”  When, in fact, they did not.

5. The women who randomly walk up to the counter and say “CHOCOLATE MILK?!?” And I’m all, “uhhh, what about it?”  and they’re all “They didn’t bring it over!” and I’m like, “it’s right there in the cooler, you get it yourself.” and they try to act like they were still right to be angry as they walk over to get it.

6. Men who are more than twice my age who insist on “taking me away from all this” and promising that I “will never have to make another sandwich again… for money.”

7. People who order while talking on their phone. Especially when they’re in the middle of a monologue and I feel like I have no way to ask any follow-up questions (what kind of bread, any cheese, what kind of toast, etc.).

8. Girls that come in and only order a toasted bagel with cream cheese to go. Not only because this is the exact scenario in which I almost cut off my finger the other day (my boss doesn’t think a bagel-slicer or pre-sliced bagels is sensible), but because it really makes no sense. We’re a cafe/deli. We don’t even make our own bagels, we get them from New York Bagels every week and flash-freeze them to keep them fresh. So it’s not like there’s any special reason our bagels are better than anyone else’s or anything. So if you really want a to-go, toasted bagel and cream cheese, I really just don’t understand why you don’t just go to Starbucks or Tim Hortons or even New York Bagels.

Valentine’s Day…

…is still TWO WEEKS AWAY. And I’m already seeing all these anti-Valentine’s Day posts and graphs and links. And, I’m sorry, but I really think it’s obnoxious.

Now, because I do happen to be in a relationship, I know a lot of readers will not consider my opinion valid on this topic. But I have been through Valentine’s Days single before, too.

It annoys me when people freak out about anti-Valentine’s things. No amount of “boycotting” is going to make the holiday go away. Sure, it’s Hallmark’s favorite money-making holiday, but that doesn’t make it evil. Don’t get anything from Hallmark, then.

I guess my point is that, if you don’t plan on celebrating V-Day this year, why ruin it for everyone else? Why give a normal day with a label for the sake of tradition have the power over you to ruin your day? Or even week? (Or, in the case of the links and blog posts I’ve been seeing, every day of February until Valentine’s.)  There’s no real harm in Valentine’s Day.  Why act like it’s the worst thing to happen to you?

You know that quote, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent?” This holiday is the exact same way. This day is not “ruining your life.”  You are the one making yourself feel depressed or angry.

And, in my opinion, the worst part is that most of these very protesters of Valentine’s will abandon their claimed stance on the topic one they are in relationships. It’d at least be much better to hold your opinions of V-Day regardless of your romantic status.

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Ignorance and Obnoxiosity.

I hate my Brit Lit class.

Not because of my teacher – I actually really like him.

Not because of the assignments – I’ll admit, there’s a lot of homework, but it’s managable.

Because of the other students.

They all take everything personally- differentiating interpretations of poetry, when you use a word they don’t know, when you answer a question when they knew the answer, too, but the teacher picked your hand first. It’s terrible.

And here’s the thing.