What do I want to BE when I grow up?

Yet again, I am faced with the near-existential crisis that accompanies graduation. Or being in your mid-twenties. Or simply being alive.

I strongly feel the question should be "WHO do I want to be?" but it isn't. I have to pick a job, because that's what people do. And I am supposed to pick a job that can turn into a career- that can go somewhere, direct my life, give me purpose for the next forty years or so.

Is it okay if I don't want to?

I don't like to work.

There, I've said it.

More specifically, I don't like having a job. It's not that I'm lazy, per se (I am lazy, just no more lazy than plenty of people who have jobs, careers, etc.), it's just that I don't want that life. Get up, go to work, come home exhausted, go to sleep so you can get up and go to work again. I understand that plenty of people who lead that life don't particularly want it. It's just what you do to be an American adult. But I don't want to do it. So, do I have to?

It's looking like the teaching thing might not happen, at least not this year. For about two weeks, this really freaked me out. I wanted a path, a goal, certain steps that would lead to certain other steps that would lead me down the road to respectability and old age. Then I stepped back and realized that I don't really care that much if I'm not teaching. I mean, I want to teach: if I have to have a career, I want one that I feel is contributing to the world and one that focuses on things I love (reading...books...talking about reading and books). But as I don't actually want a career, the not teaching thing isn't such a great loss.

A friend and I recently discussed my plans and put the "things I want to do with my life" in this order:

- Writer
- Own/Run my own bookstore/cafe
- Teach

And what I want most by far is to be a writer...so doesn't it seem silly to pursue another career in the meantime? Yes, I need to make enough money to live and make my student loan payments...but that's it. I don't need a job to become the center of my life when I would rather center it on friends, family, and writing.

So here's my justification for a possible future of bummin' around: all typed-out and easy to access.


In other news, no Madam President for us in the US. She's been losing for so long that it's not a shock at all, but it's still disappointing. Time to learn how to be an Obama supporter, I suppose.

Another Direction...

So, I guess it's time for the official blog announcement: I have decided what I want to do next year, where I want to go. And it's not Boston College, Brown, or Ohio. For me to have this much foresight about my life is fairly amazing. The dream has changed, it has changed significantly, and here it is...

I'm going back to Maryland to teach high school English.

I shall wait for the gasps to cease before I continue. Settle, people, settle.

I'm done with Academia. I can't imagine doing it for another five year to get my Phd, let alone the rest of my life. I love taking classes and learning new things. And, luckily, I can continue to do this the rest of my life outside of the crazy little world of Academia.

I also want to do something with my life, something that contributes to the world. Now, while I'm young and optimistic. Idealistic, even. Not yet jaded. I want to do more than write papers about obscure Victorian topics that are only read by other Phds. I've read a lot of the stuff written on George Eliot, and you know what? I'm okay with the inventory. The topics have been covered. I have nothing new to add.

But teaching high school: that makes an impact on the world. I think one of the greatest 'gifts' I was given in my middle and high school years was the love of reading and writing. Okay, I'm sure it was already in me somewhere, but it was brought out and nutured by some pretty extraordinary teachers: Ms. Winters, Mr. Jira, Mrs. Ikler, just to name a few.

I also, to my tremendous and continuing surprise, want to grow up a little. I want a real job and a real salary. I want to be part of an adult community instead of just on the outskirts. Really. This feeling shocks the hell out of me. I never thought I'd want this, but I do.

In the grand, master plan, the teaching is not forever. In the grand, master plan, I write as much as I can during the school year and constantly during my summers off. And I eventually become a published writer and then a famous, well-paid published writer, and then, finally, a famous, well-paid published writer who writes all day. But this will be after I've put my time in and served my community as a teacher. And, who knows? Maybe I'll want to keep teaching and just publish a little more slowly.

And there's something about Maryland. I love living in New York City, and I will continue to love it for my last nine months or so here. But Maryland calls me home.

So that's it. Get your NYC visits in while you can, 'cuz I'm not staying for long. That's the new life plan. Just the fact that I have a plan and am not throwing myself onto the various winds of fate and whimsy is in itself encouraging.

Thoughts for the Future...

Once we get fed up enough with the American government, my cousin T and I are going to open a bar in Australia called 'Why We Left America'. There will be many drink specials, a lot of menu items stolen from Padonia Station (flavored eggrolls), and a two bedroom apartment over the bar.

There are so many alternate realities out there, and I can't live them all.

Quandary of the Day: When did I become the kind of girl who greeted people with a mutual cheek-kiss? I did this a lot at my friend's gig last night, to people I haven't seen in ages. Why? Why is this an effective method of greeting people?

Pink Tea Princess

I am currently sitting at my desk enjoying a nice cup of Twinings Sunset Rose Herb Tea and writing to you fine people.

One day, I hope to have a little girl (whose name, hopefully, will be McKim) and some afternoons we will take tea, as the English do, and this is what I will serve her. She will love it because it is pink and I will let her put honey and milk in her cup. I will love it because it is caffeine free and little McKim will be able to take a nap afterwards, so I can work on my latest novel. If that is not a Twinings commercial waiting to happen, I don’t know what is.

I would have been thrilled to have pink tea as a child. Instead, I thought of it as a mythical beverage that got served at princess’ tea parties. I didn’t discover pink tea until I had hibiscus tea at my swanky hotel in Budapest, almost two years ago.

This blog is meant to be more about children than pink tea.

My friend and I were out to lunch this weekend (the first of many), when we saw a little girl eating with her family at the next table over. She was adorable- she may even have worn pigtails- and she made bird noises, and we did the requisite ‘ooh’ing and ‘ah’ing and cooing and felt our uteruses (I really wanted to write uteri here) yearn. Then I ruined everything by looking away from the child, spearing a bite of lettuce, casually, and saying, “You know, at least one of us will have one of those in the next five years” (by ‘us’, I did not mean my friend and I but our entire group of close knit college friends- our posse, if you will).

And it blew both of our minds.

Because it is one thing to live on our own and have jobs and bills and nights on the town and one night stands and car problems and balanced diets and gym memberships and pets and dinner parties and houseplants that don’t die, but it is quite another to find yourself in charge of another person’s life. Because once you have a kid, that’s it: you’re responsible for him or her (or them- eek!) forever. And though I’ve always seen children in my future, I can’t see five years as adequately preparing me for that responsibility. In truth, it’s hard to see five decades as sufficient prep time.

Sometimes it seems the older I get, the further I am from being ‘grown up’. I mean, at eight, thirteen was wonderfully grown up: ooh, teendom! And then when I reached thirteen, I didn’t feel grown up at all, so it had to be sixteen, when I could drive or eighteen, when I was a legal adult. And eighteen year old Me, on the brink of four whirlwind college years, was absolutely certain that by the time I graduated, I would have things figured out. I’m pretty sure earlier drafts of Me were married by this time, with jobs and perhaps a kid or two.

Oops.

Not that I’m not glad for the revisions. I am. I mean, at eleven years old, playing house with a girl from my neighborhood, the height of sophistication was working at Sbarro’s, the pizza place in the mall, in between kissing our imaginary boyfriends (who, in their defense, drove really cool cars and wore suits).

In the end, it seems to me like I’m never prepared for anything in the Real World until I have to deal with it. Then, after I emerge victorious, I know I can handle it. I suppose having kids is the same way and that we’ll all be figuring this out over the next five…or ten…or fifteen years. And now I’ve just had the thought that, medically speaking, I really only have seventeen years of childbearing left and WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE, I’d better get cracking.

That was scary.

Still scared.

Soooo scared.

Maybe I’d better go find something stronger to drink than tea…

Or a man to impregnate me, stat.

Stat, like a hot doctor…from Grey’s Anatomy, preferably.

And this is what we call stream of consciousness blogging. And now I’m happy again.

Mmm…hot doctors...

(And, in the end, this is why I am nowhere near ready to have children: because I’d much rather think about my favorite TV show).

I will never be a paleontologist (and other tragedies of my life)

The thing that scares me most about making a decision is the faint sound of hundreds of other doors slamming shut.

Perhaps slightly melodramatic, but true.

I have two pretty awesome choices in front of me: A year in Budapest, studying Gender Studies or two years at NYU, studying English Lit.

I am not afraid of Budapest. I am not afraid of NYU. The idea that terrifies me is giving up Budapest or giving up NYU.

I love NYU's program. It's four times more expensive than Central European's. English Lit is what I really want to study, even though the Gender Studies program looks very interesting. Can I forgive myself if I don't take this opportunity to live in Europe for a year?

I am so afraid of the futures that my decisions force me to give up. I regret them without even knowing them.

I will never be a paleontologist or a politician or a chef or a surgeon or a lawyer. I've made these choices. But maybe I would have been a master chef. Maybe I would have discovered a new dinosaur. Maybe I would have met my soulmate in law school. Maybe I could have saved the world.

So how do I make this choice? I have until Friday.

'Looks like we've started something, now...'

"I'm grateful for the suite...I'm grateful for the mini-bar..."
~ John Cusack, America's Sweethearts

Currently, I am grateful that once a week I get to go home and have dinner with my crazy family. Even if my sisters, like my kitten, Darcy, seem to think that sitting on me is a good way to keep me from leaving.

So many of my peers do not get to see their families on a regular basis. My roomate (we are Roommates For Life, even if we do not technically live together right now) just got back from a long trek to Massachussetts to hang out with her family over the Labor Day Weekend. But mine are right down the road.

I know I keep saying that one day I would like to move into 'the city'. What city, I don't know. New York is fun, but it smells bad. That was the worst thing about this weekend- NYC smelling bad. And the bus back to Baltimore smelling like urine, but I'll blame that on stinky NYC.

I know that it is an independence issue and the desire to experience new things. If I can't experience new things, I will never be a 'real' writer (currently I am just a dabbling writer). But how in the world can I ever leave all that behind?