Today I was rudely awoken at 10:45 by a phone call from my mother requesting that I go pick up my dog and then go into work for her. My dog is afraid of leaving the house, and his hours at the vet having his nasty dreadlocks shaved off and getting shots did not calm him. So at this hour way too early for the slug of a being that I have become, I stand in my little sundress and giant sunglasses outside a vet’s office on a country road further outside of the city limits than my house, trying to get my half-lab-half-St.-Bernard beast of an animal into my convertible. I felt like I was trapped in some sort of ridiculous city-girl-goes-country ABC Family movie. After much pulling, I got him in, only to go around to my side and have him jump back out again. Then he slobbered all over my arm the entire way home which is actually not far at all, but it was so early and I hadn’t had any coffee yet and oh my god he was slobbering all over everything you have no idea. And after all of this I had to go and be presentable enough to work at an art gallery, so I stole my sister’s cardigan because I didn’t want nasty dog slobber germs all over one of my own sweaters. Obviously.
This was not today’s moment when I decided I should start reevaluating my choices. My diploma arrived today. The first thing I noticed was the address where I lived as a freshman and worked in various capacities every year after that. It made me smile to see the words “Mount Vernon Campus.” Then I opened the package and got giddy about the site of my school’s logo on the blue leather folder. I read and re-read the thing. “Be it known that the President, Faculty, and Trustees..” blah blah blah. About ten minutes later the finality of it started to register with me.
I should stop now to point out that I am emotionally stunted and generally don’t process things with any sort of emotional weight until well after the fact. I didn’t get sad about graduation until two months later <a href=“https://sweeneysays.com/2010/07/05/life-lessons-teenage-angst-and-my-clogged-arteries/”>when I was driving through New Mexico on minimal sleep</a>. Similarly, having my diploma in hand was like the world’s way of saying, “Hey, I know you keep thinking this is just summer vacation, but it’s not. You won’t be returning to DC in the fall. You won’t leave Jefferson City until you figure out how/when/why and make a decision.” It’s an unnerving thing to think about, which is why I don’t think about it more than I have to.
I’m lucky because I don’t have to think about it all that often. Usually, I think about it when I go out around my town and I ask myself why I am still here. Then I remember it is because I have no money and a degree that didn’t actually prepare me for anything I want to do and I really just want to do too many things. My job hunt usually consists of reviewing many postings in the LA area and, on a good day, deciding that about 1% of them are things I actually want to do. My parents are enablers of my confusion, for which I both love and hate them. Mostly love, really. But there are moments where I think, “Why can’t you just yell at me about how I need to get a job and threaten to kick me out.” If they did that, I wouldn’t have to consider things like my future happiness and the likelihood that a job will involve me quitting so I can come back to live above my parent’s garage again. I get to “take all the time I need” to find something that makes me “happy” because my parents love me or something stupid like that.
So if you have a job for me or some other solution to my problem, I would appreciate it. In the meantime, drinking half a bottle of wine and watching Community until 6am seems like a perfectly appropriate way to spend my time.