New Calendar Year

[mis_creation]

Well, let's see. What did I get accomplished this last year?

I graduated. With honors, which given my past record with grades is not nothing.

. . .

Sad to say, that's it.

I didn't finish NaNo, I didn't find a job, I haven't established credit, I haven't gotten a love life, I haven't lost any weight (gained some, due to my slug lifestyle, but which I don't really care about right now).

I also didn't lose my mother or my father, or my mind. I guess I'll call it a wash.

But for the sake of the gods, can I please get off my ass and do something different with this year? Anything, really.

For the record, I'd like to accomplish at least one of these things in the next year:

1. Finish a gods-be-damned novel (that's not fanfiction)
2. Take a trip without my parents
3. Get a job
4. Establish some positive credit
5. Go back to school (?!...I said different!)
6. *looks around* Um...clean my room, at least enough that I have room to work out...

******

In other, really-depressing-to-me news, due to my father's work contacts, I found out that a guy I went to school with since kindergarten and who I hated and who dropped out of fucking high school, has bought a house. Great. As if I didn't feel like enough of a loser, this asshole has an entire house. I'm not doing my karma any favors, but when it does make me feel like a cliche basement dweller, I like to think about him defaulting on his mortgage payments and his credit being ruined forever.

I'm not going to get all maudlin, and in fact, I think I'll end this post now, because the more I think about how little I've done with my life so far I want to bash my head into the wall.

Comments

[dukerevolution.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the post-graduation blues. It's really tough, I know.

I'll be honest with you, since it seems to be taking you pretty hard. After I graduated, I was depressed. Horribly depressed. Eight separate times since May, I've given serious thought to putting a bullet through my head. One time I even had the rifle in hand, tears streaming down my face as I seriously prepared to end it all. But my brother came in to the house to tell me a funny joke he'd heard, and it gave me the will to go on. I told him later that he saved my life, since he was oblivious at the time. That's a true story. I'm okay now, so don't worry.

A lot of us are in the same boat as you. I know a girl who I graduated high school with who earned a full ride to CSU Humboldt in Northern California. She ditched it to move in with her boyfriend. I figured her life was over. But she has since become a regional manager/director/honcho with Verizon and makes six figures with a high school diploma.

And that will happen a lot - folks who didn't take the time to go to college have a head start in the career world, and it often makes us feel like losers. But you've earned something from college that those folks will never have. It's not a concrete reward, or even skills, necessarily. You've had some great times with all of us in the great white north. You understand yourself a little better. You've had more opportunity to grow. And if I've learned nothing else these days, it's that life is not a competition with your peers. You may beat yourself up, and some of the less scrupulous might even rub it in your face, but you can't do anything for anyone but yourself.

Tonight at work, I ran into a girl from high school I could never stand. She was going to the star-studded, glitzy party I was guarding, and while she went in, escorted by two handsome young men, all decked out in expensive finery, I reevaluated myself. And I'm so glad I am who I am.

So keep a stiff upper lip. It takes the average graduate 2 years to find good employment. Make those two years worthwhile. And always have your support network handy.