Saturday, September 24, 2011

Somethings can't be taught, but they can be bought

My daughter just turned 12 yesterday. I'm sort of at a loss on what to do with myself about that. She's quite self-sufficient except when she's not. And she's prone to making bad decisions based on what her friends are doing, or not doing. But that can't be helped. It's part of her journey of being a human and having to be a part of the human race. Interacting with people we like, and more often than not, with people we don't like hones particular abilities, and disabilities, within our personalities. I can only hope that she understands that failure *is* an option when it comes to growing up.

As for me, I feel I've grown not enough. I've been, as usual, lamenting my poor decision to get a bachelor degree in accounting. I've been graduated since 2007 and have nothing but $42,000 in school loans to show for it. The beginning of the recession was starting when I graduated, and the accounting job I had at the time didn't care if I had a degree or not. So I made a lazy lateral move into another department because I couldn't take one more day of processing payroll for a bunch of self-important, overpaid fuck-faces. I was subsequently laid-off from my lazy lateral job, which was fine because the boss of that department was an elitist, arrogant asshole. However, the salary was great! $40,000 a year great, but the work was horrible and depressing.

When I think about how I should have sucked it up and stayed in the accounting department just for the money, considering all the debt and money woes I have now, I still think I made the right choice to get away from there. It was like earning money to keep quiet about how poorly the company was managed. It was blood money. I know that's dramatic, but that's what I've come to realize it equated to.

So now I barely earm enough in take home pay to make it to the next payday. I can't afford to pay my student loan monthly payments, $325, and have requested deferments and forebearances, which I get but the interest never stops acrruing. Never. Ever.

If I had a time machine, I would go back to 2003 and tell myself, "Don't do it! Don't waste 4 years getting a degree that no one will care about! Don't sacrifice the time with your daughter and your own life to appease people who won't be around in 4 years to help you succeed. Just don't do it."

And so I do not advocate higher education. I've been working since I was 14, and in that 25 years one thing has been clarified to me over and over. It's not what you know, it's who you know.

What I do know now is that I should have stuck to my writing as that's the person I want to be. A writer.

I also want to go to Disneyland at least once a year.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

"It's not the years, it's the mileage."

I'm 39 now. And my body is starting to feel it. I have to stretch more often throughout the day, which means I'm bent over from the waist in my cubicle more then I really ought to be. This is only because I tend to get traffic into my cubicle when I'm in that position.

Now grant it, I'm in a cubicle so I might as well have my desk right out on the sidewalk. The foot traffic through the office is over the top for the most part, resulting in my incessant bitching about all the goddamn foot traffic. The office is chaotic, loud, and disruptive enough. And what's with the people who walk so hard and heavy you assume they're weekend military types?

However this past week was spectacularly, and very out of the norm, quiet. A lot of people were out, which is not that uncommon for the summertime. But this was really quiet, like eventually I was bothered and distracted by the quiet. I realized that I had become more accustomed to the noise and distruptions. And that annoyed me. Of course, I soon got over that and ate all the office stock of Twizzlers.

The licorice is fat free. I tell myself this everytime I unwrap one. I wish I could become more accustomed to working out. I get about 15 minutes into cardio/yoga moves and I'm bored. It doesn't hold my attention. I'm not committed enough to pay for this self abuse. I've worked out to Taebo. Yes, the ones with the Billy Blanks in inappropriate shorts. I couldn't help to think of the first time I saw David Bowie's crotch in Labyrinth. I was either 11 or twelve when that movie came out. I saw it four times.

But so working out doesn't hold my attention like David Bowie's junk once did. After I had McKenzie, that pregnancy gave me 60 pounds to work off, I started doing taebo. I lost 40 lbs. So I went back to the taebo a year or so ago, and I couldn't do more than 4 weeks of it. I try to put music or news on. Something I think my mind will at least be into, which it is, and since my mind is far stronger than my body, the so-called working out stops.

Exercise isn't working for me. Maybe cutting calories will. And it would... If I worked out. I really have to try. I'm sort of like building my body up for a space walk. Okay, not a space walk. Not even a trip to space. But something big for me. I need to get my body into proper working order to procreate. But that's a story for another time.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Pre-teens are a species of their own

McKenzie's 11, her friend that's over is 12. They are oddly fascinating creatures where one cannot stop saying "ohmygawd" and the other just laughs and says, "Hehheh, yeah." I'm worried their brains have receded and become unattached to the stem. I think I can actually here a slight sloshing sound from their heads when they move past me.

What have I unleashed upon the world?

Well now that I ask that question, I wonder, or I can't help to wonder, if this is the world's karma? Not like the planet itself, that's fine! It's the people that are fucked, as George Carlin so eloquently put it. No, no. I'm talking about the world of humans, mankind, the populace, those people. What if the children and future adults of today are the karmic renderings come to life of the world that is?

Okay, that was too solemn, even for me. Shake it off.

Who has to fart?!?