Wow, it has been quite a while since I last blogged. So much has happened since then.... Let me get you all caught up really quickly.
Firstly, and most importantly, my wonderful boyfriend flew over here from New York in May, and moved in with me. It has been an adjustment, for sure; I had never lived with a boyfriend before this.. or with any boy who wasn't my brother. But I've loved every minute of it. He actually drove back home with me to meet the family! ( An event we had both been a little terrified of) And it went surprisingly well too. Except for the one little slip up from my lovely grandmother, when he was petting her dog ("I wasn't sure if he was gonna bite you or not. I don't think he's ever seen a black person before...") it was actually quite enjoyable.
In other news, the bar that I was working at went out of business, so I'm on the job hunt. Again. Boo. And since the bar was bankrupt, they have been unable to afford to pay my last paycheck. Double boo. So now I have to jump through all kinds of governmental hoops to try to get a lousy 200 dollar paycheck.
But on the bright side, I just had an interview at another little bar yesterday, so I'm reallllllly hoping I'll be hired there, and I can stop all this job application nonsense.
As far as everything else goes... well... it's going. I seem to be losing motivation for everything lately. Thank God it's summer, because I definitely wouldn't be able to do school right now. I think the only reason I did as well as I did last term (not very well, by the way) was because Kasheef was here pushing me through dead week and finals. And this loss of motivation is not a new thing by any means. The last year of school has just been torture. I don't know why it's been so hard. Maybe its watching other people from my high school class graduate, and knowing its not my turn yet. Maybe I just burned myself out during fall term with my three jobs and overloaded course load. Or maybe I'm just a little bit depressed. It seems weird to think that, because I don't really feel sad, necessarily. Its just that I feel completely unmotivated to do things that I used to like doing. Really, I just want to sleep, all the time. I feel tired, no matter how much caffeine I consume, no matter how many hours of sleep I get. I have headaches almost every day. I don't know, maybe there's something neurologically wrong with me, but I'm just really struggling. I am just so tired of feeling like all this work, all this striving towards a goal, just leads to more of the same. I've felt that way since my sophomore year of high school, and nothing has changed! Sure, I graduated high school. Great. I have a high school diploma, which, by the way, does next to no good in the job market. And now I'm in college, doing the same things I was doing in high school, but with maybe a little more direction. And once I finish that, I'm gonna have more college to get my Masters and start my career. And all that's even without the Peace Corps.
And all around me, I see people doing it the "wrong way". Getting knocked up out of wedlock in high school or college, moving in with their parents, or taking the other route and taking care of themselves. I see people entering into marriages that I'm sure won't work out. I see people living off of WIC and food stamps. And yet.. its hard not to be jealous of those people. At least their lives have started! It just seems like there is so little reward in this world for the people who want to work hard and take care of themselves. In a world where the government says, "what? You got pregnant, and you can't afford to take care of that child? Thats okay, here's some money. And some free pre-natal healthcare. Oh, and by the way, this is way more that you would earn working that minimum wage job, so why bother?" or a world where they say, "No, if you're a college student, you can't earn any unemployment. You have to find a way to pay for tuition and books on top of food, rent and bills, while working a minimum wage job, because that's all you're qualified to do. In fact, after you graduate school, that's still all you'll be qualified to do, because you don't have any real world experience. So now you've got 50,000+ dollars of student loan debt and you can barely pay your bills. Good luck." Not to mention the fact that its damn near impossible to find a job while you're a student, because employers don't want to work around a student's schedule, when it changes every three months. Especially not in this economy, when people with PhDs are competing with me for work at McDonalds. My mom tells me that I just need to work full time during the summer and save up so that I don't have to work during the school year, but that math just doesn't add up to me. Even if I saved every additional penny I made, I might have enough to last me through the first term of school, but definitely not the whole year. I don't mean to whine, or throw a pity party here, but its just the way society is, and it is so unfair. Call me a cynic, or say that those are only the exceptions, but you see it everywhere! The girl who came into a job interview dressed like a whore, who flirted her way into the job that you should have gotten. The family with 6 kids living off of welfare and making more than you'll probably ever see in your college educated life. You even see it on talent shows like America's Got Talent or American Idol. If a contestant has a sob story about how they screwed their own life up, on drugs, or as a single mother, or living on the streets, even if their talent is only mediocre, they will make it far. And someone who has worked hard, who has done everything they were told, they'll be cast aside, because they aren't marketable enough. Why does our society reward the screw-ups while ignoring the rest? I understand, they had a long way to come. They had to work hard to get where they are, but so did I. And I did it without messing up.
Maybe that is really the biggest contributer to my motivation problem. It's really hard to feel motivated to complete something when you know the reward is greater when you fail.