stuck elsewhere

You know, if Harry Potter was real, I'd be Hermione Granger and I'd have the most amazing, most loyal friends around me all the time, and a goofy, athletic, sweet guy would suddenly and magically realize that he loves me, despite the fact that I'm kind of annoying and a bit of a know-it-all. Despite the fact.

consistent thought

A part of me keeps waiting for you to remember me. But the problem is, you think you do remember me, and you hate what you remember. So it's time to stop waiting. It's been time, but I couldn't shake it.

issues

So here's what's wrong.

I'm going to a school I have absolutely no interest in attending.
I'm not going back to my school, the one I handpicked because it matched me.
All my friends are leaving town, going 204 miles away.
I am romantically alone and am starting to accept the fact that things will probably remain that way, simply because I have too many negatives and not enough positives.
I can't stand my job and my managers are, legitimately, mean to me.
I feel like everything I do/say is wrong.

Is that a solid enough list? Because I feel it's pretty damn overwhelming.

it's all in a name

Sometimes your favorite characters are named something really odd. Something like Albus, Holden, Mercutio. Sometimes your favorite characters are named something really simple and familiar, like Henry, Peter or Harry.

It's easy to name your character something familiar. But there you run the danger of making them forgettable. Will they live up to their name? Is this just some plain old Harry or is this Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived? Is it Peter from down the block, that one kid, or is it Peter Pan?

It's also easy to name your characters something not unlike the haphazard results of a dropped Scrabble set. Ghjk. There you go. It's Polish. But even still, the name must be something. Mercutio, that sad, lonely, fierce dreamer. Albus Percival Wolferic Bryan Dumbledore, our mentor for the ages. Mercutio would be nothing without his soliloquy on Queen Mab that brings every reader to their knees.

Are my character names memorable enough? Will they withstand the tests of time?

I will never know unless I give them something to be remembered for.

fatalism

I have so many cockamamie ideas on how to fix this.

• I can move out, get my own apartment, lighten the load on the family.
• Onkel Peter could move into Oma's spare bedroom and we could buy the house off Onkel Peter, maybe at a reduced price. It would be nice for the two of them to have each other as company, too.
• We could move into Nana and Papa's guest bedrooms. (But what of our things?)
• We can distribute our things into storage across everyone we know. Meg, her parents, Nana and Papa, Oma, Kodi, Saad, Onkel Peter, Moni and Frank, Pat, Phyllis. Just tuck our things away in any nook or cranny they would be willing to give up to a desk, a table, a bed, a chair. Even just a box or two.

The problem is that there aren't any fixes and there aren't any solutions. There's just day by day mucking through the mess and hoping that maybe the next turn will yield something, anything.

on work

I am, by nature, a learner. A sponge, if you will. I take in information at mach speed, all the time, never ending. If you teach me something, I'm likely to retain it. (Unless it pertains to math/science, of course. It's cruel to think anyone would commit those sorts of things to memory -- intentionally, anyway.) So when I start a new job, I start taking in a whole different brand of information, a different kind of learning.

I started with the various forms of literary criticism, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, Spanish verb tenses, Rococo art.

Now I'm being asked to learn ASDs, UPCs, conversions, credit cards, reward programs, when to talk, when not to talk, when to move, when to stay put, and how exactly to phrase the word "hello".

Not hard. A lot of information, yes, but not hard.

It's the people who make it hard. Despite the constant reiteration that I'm new, and no one expects me to do it perfectly... secretly, they do. They expect me to somehow outshine any other new employee they've ever had. They expect me to know it all the moment it comes out of their mouth. Or, in worse situations that I've already encountered, even when it doesn't.

I work at a clothing store. Today I showed up for work wearing what I thought to be fashionable, appropriate clothing. I take that very seriously, because when I was sixteen I was sent home for being dressed just slightly improperly for work. A manager, however, asked where my t-shirt was. That damned t-shirt that I thought was reserved for uniform solely on weekends. Apparently not. She said, "I'm sure somebody told you that."

They didn't. I would have catalogued that little diamond in the rough of information to save from embarrassment. Granted, this is not a calamity by any means. Hardly an apocalypse. But disturbing for a brand new employee nonetheless.

I heard a manager today get very excited that the cards for our reward program had finally been replenished. Legitimately excited. Why, I wondered, in the hell would anyone care that much?


Well, that's because this is life. Coming to work at this store every single day is their career. Their sole money-making scheme. Their life. Perfection is a necessity because there's not a whole lot else going on, really.

Perfection really isn't my top goal in this job. I have classes to attend in the fall. I have relationships to manage. Frankly, I have videogames to play and movies to watch. This is my part-time job, my little source of income big enough to cover minor expenditures (like clothing, textbooks, nightlife, gas, etc.). I'm not trying to buy a house, pay rent/utilities, or buy copious amounts of Pampers with this.

But these managers, even the assistant managers... this is their top dollar. Maybe they'll go on to district manager or regional manager. But chances are, they don't have higher degrees and they're pretty well tapped out after that because any higher on the corporate ladder requires a business degree, probably even an MBA. In that respect, I'm even a little ahead in the game of life. Okay, yes, I'm working part time at a clothing store, but I have secured upward mobility for myself. I have secured a real career.

I remember at my first job, when I was sixteen, I was in the back room helping organize clearance items and stocking (and by "helping" I think I mean I was avoiding my actual job on the floor out front) with my favorite manager. He was an older gentleman, but no more than 50. I mentioned something about my dad being a lawyer.
"A lawyer, huh?"
"Yeah. He's his own boss, too. He's a partner at his own firm."
My manager sighed wistfully and paused his stacking of boxes.
"So he had to have gone to law school, then."
"Yup!" I responded, not quite realizing the distinct change in the air.
He looked down at his hands. "He must be a very smart man. That's much further than I went." He sighed again. "So I'm a manager... here."

Being a manager might be kind of a nice stepping stone, a pretty bulky piece for your resumé. But I don't think many people want to do it forever. Some people, though, don't have anywhere else to go.

Working retail always reminds me of that. These people are so hell-bent on perfection in their jobs, exhibiting dictatorial behavior over the peon employees (i.e. me), but I think the reason in a lot of cases may be because if this is all they've got, then god dammit they're going to make it perfect and right.

This really isn't Socrates-esque observations or conclusions I'm sharing here. It's more or less pop psychology, really. But it's something I think about when I'm being told I didn't say hello properly. It makes it a little easier to want to do it right the next time.

money

I have a job. And for a moment, I'm going to be selfish and jot down in one place the things I desperately want to get with this money. Why? Coz it's my fucking blog, that's why. Bite me.

1.  A new bike
2.  A new wardrobe, seeing as I haven't been shopping since high school.
3.  My own camping gear. And I learned from my parents: I am not lending that shit out to anyone.
4.  Uhh...

I would say "Save up to travel again" but I learned from past experience that travelling alone is not all it's cracked up to be, and who the fuck in my life (besides myself) is reliable enough to actually say yes, for starters, and then continue to say yes, and then actually save up an adequate amount of money? That would be no one. I can't even get my friend to commit to a 3 day, $250 trip to Cedar Point. Not really that huge of an endeavor. I can't imagine trying to organize a $4,000 trip to Germany or Ireland.

So really, that's not that long of a list. Therefore not really all that selfish. Boom.

**edit**
Allow me to add "credit card debt" to that list. Not nearly as exciting, but a necessary evil.

bad day

I want to scream. Something is wrong today... really terribly, horribly wrong. I want to scream until my lungs rip, and I want to pull someone's hair and tell them that everything is their fault. Unfortunately, nothing in my life is anyone's fault, not even entirely my own. I'm just really... really... frustrated.

I want a couple material things right now. I want a haircut. I want some new, up-to-date clothes. I want a bike. I want coals for my hookah. That's pretty much it, at this point. And I can't get any of them. I know that sounds petulant and childish and what have you, but it's beyond frustrating. I have $30 to my name. That's it. $30 to last me the summer. And then what? Get a job then? I just highly doubt that I'm going to get hired. I don't know what it is, I just have this sinking feeling that it's not gonna happen. If it does, spectacular, great! Still doesn't solve all my problems, but wonderful.

...I miss my friends. So many of them are here, but either they have plans or I can't afford to get to them or I can't afford to do anything with them. It's like being in a glass room and watching things happen without you.

I'm feeling very disillusioned and depressed today. More so than usual. I want to get on my bike and ride somewhere and clear my head, but -- oops! -- I don't have a bike. On top of all that, my self esteem is completely in the toilet. So do something about it! Get off the computer and do something! Do what? Work out? Why? It's never had any effect in the past, why would it now? Also, I absolutely hate working out. I have yet to find some form of it that I enjoy, that makes me feel good about myself.

In short...

Nothing is perfect.

on the tip of my tongue

All I want to do is write. Painfully, desperately, hopelessly. I feel my fingertips twitching for pencil or keyboard. My brain is constantly on the brink of the greatest idea the world has ever known, like an excellent thought just on the tip of your tongue. I could write a novel if only I could come up with the idea.

SaraLee Speller headed north that day. She was unsure of what exactly lay "north", but she knew that it was a direction she very infrequently traveled, as work was to the west and her social life generally lay to the east, and her parents were oriented in a more southerly direction. North was the direction that called her that auspicious day.


It was not an auspicious day for any particularly outstanding reason. She had woken up at 7:02, brushed her teeth, and ambled down the hallway to the kitchen, where she poured bland cereal and milk into a bowl and arranged four strawberries on a small paper plate. Shortly after that she showered, dressed simply, and left the house. As SaraLee drove down the highway, a song came on the radio that she hadn't heard in years and that she particularly enjoyed. She began to dance all by herself in the car, singing louder and louder until she became determined to vocally overpower the actual singer. In the midst of her personal dance session, she forgot the highway she was already on, mistaking it for the next highway, and took the exit going in the direction the exit off of the next highway would go. In short, she lost her place.


This geographical misstep led her north, a direction she hadn't traveled in quite some time. It took her a moment to notice her mistake, and by that time the song had ended and she had already passed two exits that would have taken her right back in the other direction, safely south, toward her actual destination. It took her another three exits and yet another song to realize that she didn't want to correct herself today. Today, SaraLee wanted to mess up.


It wasn't that work was difficult or tedious or even tiresome: she enjoyed her work well enough, and she was good at it. It wasn't that her life was unpleasant, though a romantic interest would have perhaps added a bit more to the picture. It wasn't even that she felt confined or jailed or whatever people usually say by her comforting routine.


The simple fact was that SaraLee wanted to make a mistake and watch with a curious eye to see where it carried her. She very rarely made mistakes, and when she did, it was something like buying the French blend of name brand coffee grounds instead of the House blend, or using waterproof mascara when she meant to use regular (which was really more of a pain than anything, because waterproof mascara is absolutely bomb-proof and makes a nighttime face-washing regimen much more time-consuming than need be). These mistakes had an easy fix; they didn't particularly disrupt the flow of a routine day.


Driving until water or country boundaries stopped her, however, was not quite as easily resolved. What would she do without her orange toothbrush, her clothes, her facial moisturizing cream? She didn't know. It wasn't really important. She wanted to see what lay to the north. 


Whoa... okay. So my original goal was just to spit out a couple one-liners for possible story starters. Maybe strike gold with a possibility. Gold is pocket change compared to the ideas I have with this, the amount I wrote! I struck a precious gem mine! It's raining rubies and sapphires.

Maybe this is that novel. Maybe this was the idea on the tip of my tongue.

growed up

I wanna be a growed up, with a growed up house and growed up pets and a growed up lover and growed up children. I wanna rock a baby to sleep and crawl into my own bed next to someone I love. I wanna wake up and go to a job I love dearly. I wanna take advantage of nights when the kids are out and it's just us...