I’ve got some dreams to make true

In graduating and moving to a new city and new school and meeting new people, I’m asked the same question over and over:

So, what do you want to do with your life?

I usually explain to them about what I’m studying, how I’d like to become a teacher and work with deaf kids in a mainstreamed setting and this is always met with interest.  But I have another dream too.

I dream that I have a healthy family, a loving husband and a safe home.  I dream that I am financially secure and can support my family.  That I raise my children to be happy and strong and that I die before I realize death is coming.

Of course, that’s really not what people are asking about, so I keep it to myself.  But that’s what I want to do with my life.

Growing Up

I have never felt so old as watching the college kids move in this weekend.  Listening to them make plans on the bus and watching the boxes disappear into buildings has made me realize; somewhere between graduation and now, three months later, I grew up.  Of course, I was considered “grown up” well before then, but I had never before labeled myself “adult.”  Until now.

I know how much debt I’m getting into.  Though I know it was a mistake, I was not fully aware of the loans I had taken out in order to help pay for college.  For the most part, I let my parents deal with the finances.  Call me spoiled if you want, but that’s the way it was.  I’m paying my own way now, and I am acutely aware of how much I’ll be paying off after graduation.

This means I’m getting thrifty.  I need to pick up some new work clothes for the fall since I’m woefully short on business attire and I’ll be doing so at the thrift store down the road.  I don’t go out to eat.  I try to minimize my expenses as much as possible.  Laundry gets washed in the tub.  Plastic bags are washed and reused.

What makes me feel so much older than the college kids though, is that 10:30 is bedtime now, not the time to go out.  It seems the older I get, the earlier I go to sleep.  Freshman year it was 2:00 at the earliest, sometimes much later.  By senior year, I was asleep at 12, sometimes earlier.  After running after preschoolers this summer, being asleep by 10:30 was late.

While waiting on the bus with the girls behind me making plans for later that night, I knew it was time to be the adult.  Get out of t-shirts and jeans, learn to talk on the phone, pay your own way.  Grow up.

Graduation Day Approaches: No Regrets

As a corollary to my post of regrets, I want to follow up with what I don’t regret. While there are many things I wish I could change, there are also many things I would do the same if I had a second chance.

I’m glad I took German that first year. Though I didn’t like it enough to continue study in the subject and I sometimes wish I had taken ASL instead, I always wanted to learn German and now at least I can say I learned a little. In a related note, I’m glad I took a class which exposed me to Welsh and Gaelic. I have a long list of languages I want to learn and the little lessons we had for just the ability to pronounce names within the literature took those two languages off the list.

I’m glad I switched into an English major. Though I’m faced with low pay and the idea that humanities majors are somehow not as smart as scientists, the switch made me much happier and I’m going to be working in a job I enjoy instead of being miserable in a job I don’t enjoy. Also, the switch helped me to realize that I am actually a very good writer.

I’m glad I went so far away for college. My choice of schools was a bit of a fluke in that it was my only school that admitted me outright and didn’t waitlist me. I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t like it here. The opposite is true. I love it here. I can’t imagine the last four years without the people I’ve met. Also, in coming out east, I have realized that I really like having all four seasons.

I’m glad I did actually go through the process of getting the help I needed. Now I know that if (God forbid) I’m ever in the same situation, I can let myself ask for help. And, while I wish I had gone to medication sooner, I am glad I went without it first.

Graduation Day Approaches: Regret

I have just finished my last class of my undergraduate career.  I’m done.

While I’d like to live my life without regret, I know that I already have quite a few and as graduate day approaches, I’m finding more and more regrets from my time spent in college.  There are alot of things I’m glad happened and I wouldn’t do any other way, but today is for everything I wish had happened.  The No Regrets post is for another day.

I wish I had taken more pictures.  Four years flies by so fast and now I have very few pictures to remember them by.  Now I need to rely on mooching pictures from what other people have.

I wish I hadn’t spent so much time in the wrong major.  I was a physics/astronomy major for a year and a half and it made me miserable.  I wish I had realized earlier and switched or even just started college as an English major.  If I had the time I would have double majored in English and ASL, but because I didn’t start the English major until halfway through college, I didn’t have time to do both.  On a related note, I wish I had started ASL sooner so I could make a proper major or minor out of it considering it has such alot to do with what I’m studying next.

I wish I had studied harder and made more effort to pass those important classes.  There are a few classes I just simply failed and it was a matter of getting to class and doing the homework that did me in.  If I had been a better student, I would have avoided the problem I’m in now, where my grade in one class decides whether I get to graduate or not.

I wish I had started the medication sooner.  While it helped alot when I was on it, it would have done wonders through my first two years of college.  There are so many maybes attached to “If I had been happier those first two years.”  Maybe I would have been a better student.  Maybe I would still be a science major.  Maybe I would have switched majors sooner.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

There are others (like I wish I had lived off campus and I wish I realized earlier how awesome the people around me are) but those are the big ones.  The ones I would change if I could go back and do it over.  When I was a senior in highschool, people told me that college was a learning experience.  I didn’t realize that regret was a part of learning.

Counting my blessings

Here in the US it is Thanksgiving tomorrow and tonight I am taking the time to think about what I am thankful for.

I am healthy, but physically and mentally.

I have been blessed with family and friends who love and care for me.

The people I love and care for are all healthy.

I have a roof over my head and food to eat.

I have been able to pursue my education beyond highschool in the field of my choosing.

There are other, countless little things that I am also thankful for, but I don’t think they need to be listed.  Oh, and:

I am more than thankful to experience the light after the darkness and for all the help I have received in order to do so.

Reasons why I write

The other day, my friend and I were talking about blogs and blogging and the subject of readership and popularity came up, as it will when you have this awesome cool stats page available to you and she asked me if anyone actually read this thing. The truthful answer is no, not really. I get people cruising in from various places, but it’s not linked anywhere and generally, the daily count is under ten, usually under five. (Unless it’s something controversial, like the Golden Compass. Or knitting related, because knitters are everywhere.)

I don’t care about that.

This blog is one of the many places for me to write in. True, I do write as if someone will come along and read it and so it’s not as deeply personal as, say, my paper journal, but that’s a necessity of the public aspect of wordpress.

I made the decision to keep this accessible to others as a way for me to practice being honest. Expressing myself to others has always been difficult, so I’ve used the public nature of the blogging world to open up, even if it’s opening up to a vast vacuum of silence. The point is, it’s out there and the thought is that if I have it written down where anyone might see it, maybe it will become easier to talk to people that I actually know in the real world.

So if we start comparing, you’ll probably come out on top, but I don’t mind.

(I am amused that this is being filed under “Introduction” even though it’s nowhere near the start.)

The Golden Compass- No Atheists Here!

I have read too many posts about how the Golden Compass is turning the children into atheists to stay quiet about it. Of course, it doesn’t help that Snopes confirms. This is the article that people pull out to satisfy themselves that they’re right and that the Golden Compass is wrong and they most certainly wont be taking their children to see this horrible movie.

Everyone I’ve seen talking about it so far has been older adults with children. The kids will probably want to see the movie, so the adults are checking it out. The problem is that these adults haven’t actually read the books. So let me talk as someone who read the books as an older child (12-13).

I didn’t notice the religion stuff.

In fact, it came as a shock to me when I learned a couple of weeks ago that the main characters apparently kill god. I had completely missed that part! I was too busy being sad that Lyra and Will grew up at the end to notice that Pullman was (supposedly) trying to turn me into an atheist. (For the record, it didn’t work.) Want to know what I did notice?

Daemons. How cool were they?

The most important point though, is that NO movie or book will turn a child into an atheist. It’s a completely ridiculous suggestion and the fact that a book or movie has religious or anti religious themes should not cause a parent to censor the child. If they are age appropriate, then let them read the book if they want to and then engage in discussion. A parents religious views impact a child far more than a book or movie.

Also, if it makes the child discuss these themes with their parents, this is a mark of good fiction. Good fiction doesn’t make you feel all warm and fluffy and sure of your convictions. Good fiction makes you think!

God only knows

Today I’m working really hard on blame and believing that it’s not my fault.

One of the most difficult things I find when dealing with depression is that it doesn’t take much to let the monster rage through my head. It’s the little things that make me feel so tired and worthless. For example, I just realized that I forgot to mail out an important form to my employers about authorizing a background check. This isn’t a big deal. I’ll mail it out tomorrow and everything will be fine. Yet it’s made me feel like I am truly incompetent and that maybe I’d be better off without the job anyway. All because this form was in the wrong pile of papers.

There are thousands of these moments through the day, each with an opportunity to be equally damaging. Is it any wonder that depression makes it so difficult to get through the day? It’s been found that those suffering from depression have a skewed sense of proportion about the importance of things and I’m certainly feeling that today.

I realize that the reason I’m having such a difficult day is because I forgot to take my meds this morning. At least I have a reason, but it would be so nice not to have to deal with it at all.

Time and change

In the introduction post, there is a list of bits of information that might be useful to know about me. At the top of this list is the fact that next year I will be a senior in college.

Tomorrow I will wake up to my last day of classes as a junior. After tomorrow, my papers and tests will be done and I will begin to consider myself a senior. I have some issues with this. I have no idea what will happen after I graduate. I don’t know how to make the transition from being a college kid to becoming a productive member of society. It seems impossible. How do people do that? How do I get a job, find a home and still keep a hold of the relationships I’ve found here? It sounds terribly complicated.

The other issue is time. There’s not enough time for me to stay here, where my friends are the next door down and I worry about homework, not taxes and traffic and the state of the world. Grade school and high school dragged on, but college is slipping by like sand through my fingers. Soon enough my friends will scatter over the world, but I want to keep them together, the next door down so I can poke their noses, steal their beds and drag them away to food.

It’s so unfair that time drags through our childhoods and then rushes through right as we’ve found some place nice to be. I guess all I can hope for is another nice place after this one and that I don’t let the distances and silences grow between the people I’ve met here as time goes on ofter we graduate. And I hope for nice people in the future and as many chances to see old friends again as I can manage.

I wish I could stop time in this place where I am so comfortable.

Vocabulary

Yesterday’s post has had me thinking about vocabulary today. I realized in writing that post that I don’t like the terms “Depressed” or “Depression.” They’re alright for a medical term, I guess, but to me they don’t seem to have any connection to what they mean.

When people ask me how I am, I never say depressed. On the days when I have trouble getting out of bed or gathering energy for anything I’m “tired”, when it’s one of Those Days I’m “Not having a good day”, when it’s a day where I feel like I’ll cry if I talk to people, I’ll simply shake my head.

Anything is more descriptive that depressed. To me, depression means “A chemical imbalance in the brain resulting in the persistent feeling of sadness” and not “A crushing weight on all four of my limbs and an especially heavy one sitting on my heart.” It’s so much more than sad.

The other reason for avoiding the term is its prevalence in the media. I feel that there has been such an expansion of depression in the public view the past few years that the word no longer holds any importance to the people you interact with daily. I’ve considered informing my professors, but I always back down because I feel it won’t be considered valid. Maybe that’s a matter of ignorance, but I think that being more descriptive would lend the matter more importance and make some people realize that depression is a real, often debilitating problem. It often seems less so when it’s heard everywhere. Sometimes the media makes it seem like everyone and their brother suffers from depression and that makes me think that I have less right to use the word.

And for something more upbeat on the topic of vocabulary, I love the word “Twain” and wish it was used more often.