Petraeus

In an effort to get my ever-expanding ass off the couch, I have signed up for a class. Sure, you say, I have tried this before and dropped. Didn't I sign up for both Soccer and Piano last term and drop within hours? Didn't I even walk out of the piano class halfway through, after a quick speech about how I was too poor, because I couldn't be bothered? Haven't I signed up for, and subsequently dropped, half of the community college catalogue? The answer is, unfortunately, yes.

Walking on to a community college campus may be uplifting for some. But to me, the whole thing looks like a run down high school for the most populated class on Earth. Sure, they try to cover up the concrete walls with interesting architecture, and you know that everyone there (per advertising) has a burning will to learn and endless potential. But the whole thing smells, tastes, and feels like high school. I hated high school. And no matter how much I want to learn and get motivated / improve myself, there is no way in hell you can get me back there. If I had to do it all over again, you can be damn sure I would be one of the girls smoking in the bathroom and starting fights with the band geeks. I have learned that all the shit we put up with in high school is simply not necessary. Since I am older and wiser now, I have realized there are several things I would do if a genie sent me back to that evilness. For your convenience I have fashioned a list.

Things I should have done in high school:

1. Punched out one, or several, of my coaches for being ass faces (before I turned 18, of course.)
2. Bilked a student association out of a grand of tax free profit pocket money. (wait, I did that. no, i didn't steal it.)
3. Sued my principal just for fun.
4. Smoked on campus and then run from the cops through freshly falling snow that covered my tracks.
5. Defaced the school mascot.
6. Engaged in hijinks.
7. Set fire to the football field the night before homecoming.
8. Did the nasty with Christian Slater after he fired blanks in the caf.
9. Spiked the cafeteria food with hallucinogens.
10. Skipped every day save for assembly days when I would hide and smoke in the bathrooms with other malcontents.

Given that I have such an extensive list of things to do should I go back to high school, and Community College is so similar, it stands to reason that I am too busy to get all of this done and must therefore forfeit my place in the class. Really, it will be a relief to the principal/dean of said institution.

Dear...

Dear Blog,

I am very sorry that this past year has been riddled with dry spells and avoidance. I promise in the future to follow through with my pledge to ignore work in a more productive fashion.

More or less Sincerely,

M Jaye

Quarterlife Crises

seems to me that our specific generation is in perpetual crises. perhaps it is the youth that being only 26 affords me, but me and mine, we always seem to be on the edge of a cliff or straddling an oblivion that threatens to overwhelm us. and everyone you talk to, no matter what age, we've deemed it socially relevant but naming it a crisis. For those who graduate college, there's the depression and m&m's crisis that marks the overwhelming knowledge that you have to go out in the real world for the first time in your life. And once you've finally righted yourself from that catastrophe, you've got the quarterlife crisis which peaks on your twenty-fifth birthday and makes you realize you're finally old enough to mark you life in percentages. This blends nicely in to the 10th year reunion crisis where you decide that nothing you have accomplished in your life is enough to go back and face those who tortured you/you tortured. This, of course, blends seamlessly with the I am turning 30 and now am supposed to be responsible meltdown... All of them, seemingly unrelated and revolving around specific life events have one thing in common: the perpetual feeling that this isn't what it was supposed to be. Somewhere along the way, it all turned to shit and most likely the damn thing was hollow to begin with.

Maybe it is the fact that we were brought up with such high expectations. We came of age when millionaires were made overnight with little to no training. We all expected that silicone valley rush to the top. The ease of it all. We figure, as long as I have my website, or do this one other thing, it will be fine, I will be set for life. But that won't happen for most of us. And with increasing debt and cost of living, we're clinging even more tightly to the dream of hitting the one big thing that will land us our cushy life once and for all. I sure as hell want that. But then you start to get older, and your back starts hurting and you start settling lower and lower. You start bargaining with your dreams which one will you sacrifice first. And after the first one goes, the second.

I guess I am just maudlin today. Perhaps I have indigestion.