So- I am home for break... bored out of my mind.
I spent the first couple days getting yelled at, and today I did a lot of baking and shopping and things, so I feel as though I should be allowed to not get yelled at.

Additionally, I am going to be working at Toys R Us this winter.  You may ask, "Bethany, why do you do these things to yourself? Macy's, Target, now Toys R Us?"
And to that, I say, "Good point. I don't know."
However, it's a job and it's NOT getting yelled at by my mother.  It doesn't pay well, but it's a job.  I do these things for the great stories.  Like last year, when a woman returned a memory foam mattress topper because there was a dead snake coiled up inside.  Disgusting? Yes. Good story? Absolutely.

We got our grades today from fall quarter.  I scored obnoxiously low in econ, of course, but I passed, and that's what really matters here, isn't it?
Other than that, my grades were much better than expected, so next time you see me, you should give me a pat on the back or buy me a drink or something.  It was a rough quarter... But I will accept your praise graciously.

In other news, I have been very good at not screwing things up with a boy.  We'll see how this pans out.  I'm sure not well, and now it's the break, but I'm trying really hard not to say anything stupid.  It plays to his favor, however, that he is far less dramatic than anyone else, so when I do slip up and say something dumb, he doesn't flip out about it.  I'm so used to walking on eggshells with boys, this is kind of a huge relief. No worries though, avid fans of my, dare I say, "Love Life." Without a doubt, some way or another, this will not be working out, oh, I'd say about a month after I get back to school.  He or I will freak out or just become disinterested or something equally as detrimental to continuing whatever semblance of a relationship we have managed to piece together because I am crazy and don't make it easy for anyone to actually spend time with me.

Regardless.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  And that, well, that makes me all giddy inside.

So I've been dealing a lot lately with finding post-graduation employment.  It's sort of this huge hassle, especially with how awesome the economy is, but I have been trying nonetheless.

My goal is to not end up in the Northern Midwest.  I think that would depress me mostly, with it's cold and it's isolation.  For some reason states like Minnesota seem more isolated than, say, Alaska.  Which is weird, I know.  But ugh- Minnesota.

There have been various career fairs which I have attended, both in a general university-wide sense as well as a more concentrated recruitment fair for my major.  My resume by now has been given to roughly 20 companies, most of which have probably discarded it, along with my business card.  Only one has had the decency to send me an e-mail saying that they have decided to "move forward with other candidates whose backgrounds more closely match the requirements for the positions in which we are recruiting."  I can't help but re-read this message over and over, always tempted to respond and ask what would have helped my cause, what are companies looking for, what would give me an edge...
I have no edge.

It's hard to manufacture a competitive advantage when you're drowning in mediocrity.

And I'm not necessarily deterred from the job search with this single rejection note.  It just leaves me with the stark realization (which I have burying in the back of my mind) that I can't be better than other people.  It's something I've known for a very long time, but I know this entire job-search process will only make the fact that I'm not good enough abundantly clear.  The Wall Street Journal says that there is still a lot of competition among companies for new talent, but they are looking for the best of the best.

What happens when you're not the best?

It's unfortunate because, on paper, I am a cut out cookie of every other business student everywhere.
What I would like to know is, what does it take to be the cookie cutter?

I guess it's a little late now to try to improve myself, but I don't really know what else I could have changed.  I never had the time to find an internship that would have been extremely beneficial to my career.  Between two-three jobs, the random activities/extra-curriculars I was involved with, and crazy academics, I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to anything other than getting through school.  But now that I'm almost at the end, I look back and wonder why I feel like I didn't really benefit from it at all.

There are just too many people in the world looking for too few jobs.  The feeling makes me overwhelmed almost to the point of being nauseous, a dread I usually push back into my gut.  I'm going to get ulcers before this is all over.  I should really stop worrying quite so much, but it's just such a crappy feeling knowing that you're not good enough.  It's a graduated scale-- in grade school, my mother told me I wasn't good enough to go to a certain high school; in high school, I wasn't good enough at soccer; in college, I am not good enough for life.
Seems fitting.

It just seems like every time I make some sort of life decision that sets me back on the right path, I end up hitting some obstacle.  It's starting to get a little daunting and makes me want to just give up and disappear to Europe after I graduate.  I mean, why really bother anyway?  Becoming a European bum sounds far more enticing than working a middle-class job I'll probably hate, just because I took the first job that comes my way, purely out of desperation, selling myself even lower than my BATNA, which is something I'd hoped to never do.  I wanted to have SOME pride!  But alas.  I'll take what I can get.
Really though.

I have all kinds of hidden potential.
I could be good at anything.
Why doesn't anyone else see that?

So this year, I am ARA in a building filled with mostly international students.  Most of them are Chinese actually.
Luckily! I do not speak ANY Chinese, so I find that to be helpful when communicating with them that, yes, it is in fact bad, very bad, to smoke in the dorms, or NO! DO NOT SWITCH YOUR KEYS WITH YOUR FRIENDS! How will we know where you live!?! (Which makes an administrative nightmare for me to try to clean up later.)

My staff is pretty awesome, so I'm excited to be working with them this year.  They also all work pretty hard, which is much needed in this insane building.

I want to know who thought it was a good idea to isolate all of the international students into one building.  This is a Housing Department experiment, which they effectively ignored for awhile, and now will probably not try again in the future.  *sigh*

Mostly, this quarter is going to be kind of insane between 20 credit hours and two jobs.  It's the end of week one and I think I'm already a little burnt out.

In other news, my sister is at OU now, attending school and what-not!
We hung out tonight and called my mother on speaker phone to bother her.  It was a grand time.

Tomorrow night is a party at a boy's house who I should probably not actually hang out with.
I have decided that I have made up my mind and I am very not interested in him any longer.  So we'll see how this works out.

Other than that, it's pretty much same-old, same-old in Bethany-Land.  I'm taking another poetry workshop class this quarter, so I'm sure I'll freak out about poems that never you never end up reading.

I'm already out of juice boxes.

You know what an interesting challenge is?

Trying to tpe, format, and edit a paper in Word when all of the toolbars are in Hungarian.
Same goes with LJ.
Do I know "Friends Page" in Hungarian?
No.
It's fun to try though.

But really:
This place is AWESOME.

I can't wait to get back to show you all my pictures.
=)

So tomorrow I leave for Hungary.
I'm very excited and nervous and everything else that makes these trips so great.

My nervousness comes from traveling overseas alone.  However, once overseas (specifically, I'll be in Amsterdam), I'm meeting up with some people and we're all flying into Budapest together.  I'm so excited! In two days I will be in Budapest!!  A mere 48 hours!  Less than!

Tonight I bought batteries for my camera and books for the plane (and layovers) and uploading videos to my iPod.  For the longest time, I couldn't figure it out, but I finally (with the help of several programs) am uploading movies (actually, "Arrested Development" episodes) to my iPod to keep me entertained.  (It was also tricky trying to figure out how to sync two iTunes libraries.)

Additionally, since I will be a captive to the ways of air transportation, I decided that this summer is once again the "Summer of Classics and Must-Reads".  Therefore, I have purchased several classic novels (some on the recommendation of my old english professor) and and forcing myself to read things I think are necessary to be a real person.


Some day I will go abroad and not even be the slightest bit nervous about getting lost in airports or missing connections in foreign countries or something like that.  I will travel all the time and it will be fantastic.  Oh- and I won't be old.  I'm going to travel while the travelin's good.
Good plan?

Good plan.

What if everything always worked out.
What if everything you actually worked for, everything you actually tried to gain, well, all the pieces fell into place.
At all the right times.



Wouldn't that be nice?
Sometimes I think that would be really wonderful.

But then who would I be? Where would I be?

A hypothetical world
simply leads to
an overly complacent Bethany.

And what fun would that be?
Just let me make my mistakes.

So instead of actually being productive and working on my poetry final, I ended up just reading through some old poems, written in a time I can hardly remember.
I know I have mentioned it before, but sometimes when I re-read things I have written I have to wonder, "What was I thinking?"

In this specific instance, I had re-read this poem several times prior to this evening and wondered what on earth it meant.  How could I not remember what the poem was supposed to mean?! I wrote it!!

Tonight I got it.  All of the sudden, it all just clicked and I realized what it was.
Can you figure it out?

"  Watch
His Wide Face
Full of Answers
You Don't Want to See.
  Time
Stands Still
When Holding
His Hands Can't
Hold on Forever-
He'll Simply Break.
   Fly
By Without Notice
Ignore his warnings
He only ever Screams
How much you
waste away. "

I adore my English professor.

He had found a tiny book of Shakespeare that once belonged to his grandfather.  He was so amazed that he had this to say on the subject:
"He read Shakespeare! Pocket-sized!!"

On Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and the aftermath of the assassination in Rome:
"Everyone was trying to turn into CNN.
But they didn't have TV, so no one knew what was going on."

Honestly though, these quotes positively don't do him any justice.  He just does things like, we'll read one of our 17th Century poems and he'll say, "Now.  Was that worth our time?  Why did I make you read that?  So we can all feel good?  So we all feel like we can connect to these dead guys?"
Or-
"How much is this poem worth?  A dollar?  Well.  I think it should be worth a million dollars."
Or-
"Does this make sense?  Kimberly- is this poem funny?  Would you date a guy who wrote a poem to you about that?"

I don't know.  I am definitely going to make an effort though to try to record his better thoughts.  He is just so fantastic, I wish you could all have a class with him!

=)

I just spent the last hour deleting almost every old text I have gotten over the past year.

It was a strange little trip through some very bizarre memories.
I was forced to recall some things I had totally and completely forgotten that I had ever said.
And even though it was just me, sitting, scanning through old messages,
some things were almost embarrassing.

Time to start over again!
(Except without text messages.  You know. 
Since I don't get them anymore. Of course- that is an entirely different story altogether.)

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

I'm tired of it all.

Who the hell cares.

Just do it already!!!!




On a related note, the weather is gorgeous.

I'm not sure if I've managed to accumulate more than twelve hours of sleep since Saturday. Sleep manages to evade me for most of the night, as evidenced by my outbox: for the past several nights e-mails I have sent are timestamped 2:30am, 3:00am, 5:25am... When I do fall asleep it's a restless kind of affair, filled with strange dreams. I'll wake up every hour and get out of bed to take care of something- brush my teeth, send and e-mail, stand in the shower... I am sure that this is less than healthy behavior.

The first time I wake up, it's usually a surprise that I had even been sleeping. Had it not been for the vague recollection of the dream I could feel slipping from my mind, my red eyes from falling asleep with my contacts still in, and my overwhelming grogginess, I would have thought I had just been lying down. When I sit up, I realize that I am still mostly dressed in what I had been wearing all day, the lights are still on, and whatever I had been working on is still open.

I don't purposefully avoid sleep. We just don't always meet up the way we're supposed to. We're on different schedules, always moving in the opposite direction. Occasionally and briefly, our paths will cross and I will wish he had time to linger, but he is catching the Red-Eye to Elsewhere. I think I will blame him for the slight illness I woke up with yesterday morning.

Despite this lack of sleep and my feeling somewhat under the weather, I have been in a very good mood. Usually my good moods are more forced, smiles more determined. Lately though, I've been strangely happy. Maybe it's because spring is on the horizon and I can smell it in the air. I do love the smell of spring.

I can imagine a time when spring and I are finally together, thawing the coldness of winter from our bones, relaxing, enjoying one another's company. There is nothing to do. No rushing about, no work, no class, no meetings, no assignments... We can just be. And all I really want is to be still and quiet and bask in the tranquility of my break from winter. I want to laugh and smile easily and joke and love everything in the air around me that spring brings. And I want spring to do the same, enjoying the time we have together.

Why can't these things be easier. Spring, why do you still seem so far away? Sometimes it feels like you are so close, but I am still feeling the chill of winter and watching the grey sky, with its ominously dark clouds, in breathless anticipation of the days where the sky is spreading its cheer and warmth. Spring is starting to become a fading, sepia-toned memory, which I am beginning to sorely miss. I miss its warm embrace and the ease with which it makes my day brighter. The winter has been too long, I guess, filled with meaningless days and endless nights of nothingness.

*sigh* I just really like spring. If I could, I would take spring's face between my hands and kiss it with all the passion I could muster and slowly, reluctantly, let it go, watching it disappear as I wait through another impossibly long winter.


--Apologies for the overall lengthiness and amazingly rambling tangent of this post.--

"What are you up to?"

"Drinkin at a bar in tol e to"

"Really?! It's a good thing i never came to visit!"

"Yeah haha i know!"

"Should i still come to visit sometime?"

"Maybe i duno"

"Oh. Ok."

So I've been having extreme problems with my insomnia lately.

It used to be kind of... not healthy, I guess, but I haven't been this bad since Spring Quarter my freshman year.
During that time, I would sleep between the hours of 6am and 9am for weeks and weeks on end... basically most of the quarter.

Now I pretty much just feel like I can't sleep.  But then, when I least expect it, I crash and am comatose for an hour or two at random intervals during the day.

Today in my management class, my professor was telling us about a conference on stress that he went to over the weekend.  Part of the conference was about sleep and sleep deprivation.

Apparently, you need to sleep.  He said, "Three to four hours of sleep a night are not enough, you are really doing some serious damage to yourself there. Like really, you're going to die. Four to six hours a night still aren't good, but better.  But if you're sleeping seven to eight, you're golden."

I asked, "For how prolonged a period of time does this sleep deprivation have to take place in order for it to be extremely detrimental to the longevity of your life?"

"Oh," he said, "basically if you only get three to four hours a night for about 10 days in a row, you'll be dead in a month."  He started at me. "Naw- I'm just kidding, I don't actually know.  That would be interesting to find out though.  I'm going to check on that."

I laughed, "Oh I knew you were kidding.  If that had been the case, I'd have died two years ago."


But seriously.  I'm going to get heart disease and die before I'm 38 if I don't start sleeping.

"I was going to call you," he said, "but I wanted it to be a surprise."

And he hugged me so tight I thought my chest would crack and my ribs would burst, but I didn't care.
I gave in.

Well, if there's ever been a reason (or maybe justification) to start a blog- this is it.

Did I tell you all?

I'm going to Hungary this summer.
I can never remember if I mentioned it...

Anyway- before my program starts, I want to sort of stumble around Europe for a bit... so I'm checking things out and seeing how easy it is to get around (or not so easy, I guess).  I'm really really excited.

I'm sort of sad because I feel like I will never get another opportunity like this.  My dad tells me not to make my itinerary too complex because I'll get to go over there again someday.  I told him I didn't believe him, but he said I was always more adventuresome than he was- and he didn't start traveling until he was 39.  He was confident that I would be going abroad in my future.

I hope so... because the way things are looking, I'm not going to be able to see all of Europe.  Hahahaha- that would have been impossible, I suppose...



I've been struck with wanderlust... it's an itch I haven't been able to get out of my toes for years.
I can never stay in one place.

"Is it bad that I wanna see you more and more each day??"


I hate myself for constantly pushing this away.
Why can't I just give in?