Jobless.

Tomorrow marks the first week I've been home.  I am

jobless.  

Which wouldn't be so bad except that looking into the future all I can see is the looming piles of DEBT that I've accrued from my time at school.  

I want to start up a website where I can begin compiling all of my writing-- reviewing local art, profiling local artists, advertising interesting upcoming shows.  In a perfect world I'd set that up and then get one of the local newspapers to give me tiny bit of space.  A link up.....print news and the world wide web.  A little taste of what I'm doing landing on people's doorsteps with the opportunity to experience more if anyone felt so inclined.  "Read my column! Like it?! Check out my website!"

That is my little dream right now.  But I keep getting this nagging feeling that I should be WAITRESSING. Or churning out lattes. Or doing something to start putting dollars in my bank account.  

As to not drown in debt.  I'd be okay with just keeping my head above water.  I don't need a yacht or anything.  Just a buoy. 

Okay.  Lame oceanic analogies aside.  I am in a conundrum.  Getting a job serving lobster to eager tourists would make me some of the money that I need, but my life would have to revolve around that work.  My writing and creative aspirations would inevitably take a back seat to the realities of schlepping seafood and cocktails....the time and energy spent dealing with harassing customers and intense restaurant managers and dramatic coworkers.  

Just thinking about it makes me feel so defeated.  Why did I even get a degree if I'm not using it?!  If the only employment I can find is working in a business where high school diplomas aren't even mandatory-- why am I $60,000 in debt?!

I know I'll probably just get over it.  Suck up my pride.  Hand out the lobsters.  But part of me is fighting it all the way. 

A battle between my sense and my sensibility.  The victor is yet to be determined. 

Rain Rain Go Away

I am exhausted.  My body feels heavy and my head feels very full.  It is exciting to feel like your life is moving forwards, but difficult forward is not the same as.....

happy

fulfilled

adventurous

loved

wanted

challenged

Movement forwards is movement out of stability. But what was ever really stable?  We all knew this would end.  So. I suppose.  Moving forwards is moving towards all of those things I wrote above.  Or at least my own definition of them.

I'll have an extra lime, please.

I am finished with college.

Which is a bittersweet sentence to type and a confusing set of emotions to wade through.

Right now it seems like everything is so incredibly BRIGHT and IMMEDIATE and FRESH that any hope of a decent amount of insight is lost.  Right now. Maybe later.

In that spirit I will write about something else. 

Like...

Gin and tonics.  I really like them and these are the reasons why:

1. My grandmother drinks them.

2. They were never featured on Sex and the City

3. I enjoy the taste of limes.

Simple, classy and good.  I think I'm going to get on a G&T kick for the summer.   Or at least for Senior Week.

Michigan Pete.

Michigan Pete.  Or was it Steve?  Or Dave?  I'm not entirely sure.  I was working today at the Outing Club house, reading Persuasian and generally not doing much work while I was earning my work-study money when a father-son duo walked through the doors.   

 Awkwardly stood there.  

And I awkwardly looked at them. 

...........And then we both seemed to acknowledge our mutual failure at acting with acceptable social decorum. 

I launched into a smiley welcome and the father asked me to "give us the real tour" while the son twisted his UVM brochure tighter...tighter....tighter...tighter.....

They were tall, thin, similar builds.  Runners I later learned.  They had travelled here from Michigan and were doing the college tour during spring break.

"Give us the real tour!"

I had to think for a minute.  What does that even mean?  I have two weeks left of classes before my life as an undergraduate comes to a bitter-sweet end and yet I couldn't just launch into anything "real" without pausing.                 

Pause.

The university system is such a system! The "real" deal is that you have to work that system.  Pay a small fortune, hope you land somewhere you mildly enjoy, find people to create a home with, a subject that inspires and impassions some part of you and do it all within a pretty rigid system created way before you got here, that will last way after you leave.  

This all went flying through my brain as I stared at Father and son Mid-west.  What came out of my mouth was.  Burlington is stellar.  UVM is fun.  Beer is plentiful.  Professors are approachable.  The Mountains are fun to hike.

Because I in reality all of those things are true.  And the father paying the thousands of dollars to send his son here wants to hear those things.  And I honestly wanted to say them.  Because I love this school and this town and these people.  Even with it's long-ass winters, hard-ass president, and stupid-ass hippies. 

When the Michigan men left, I had to laugh at how quickly I became UVM's cheerleader.

I may have worked the system, but the system worked me too.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/66843/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-baracknophobia---obey

Brilliance. 

1:48.34

Yesterday I ran my first half marathon.  Which completely rocked because 1. It was a beautiful spring day (if a little bit nippy), 2. My parents and friends trucked out all along the course to support me, 3. I felt great (or as great as running 13.1 miles in and hour and forty-eight minutes can feel), 4. Megan ran it too.  

I always wanted to run but could never figure out how to do it without killing myself.  It's been a thorn in my side since I was 15 and found out I had been running on two stress fractures for months (Oh THAT'S what that throbbing pain my shins was...) And I think I'm finally learning.  Patience and work and a Liam-like holistic approach to my health.  Which is actually more of a testament to what some people refer to as....

Maturing? 

Or something like that.  Regardless.  I am sore as shit today.  And it feels great.

A year ago...

My friend Katherine was just asking me about Barcelona.  More specifically all of the Gaudi architecture that is scattered throughout the city.  One simple question and a flood of correctly pronounced answers started flowing from my mouth.  I tried to shut up.  She just asked about Parc Guell, but for some reason her question jolted me from where I was sitting at my computer and threw me back a year ago into that city that I fell in love with.  All of the colors, smells, people, buildings that I miss.  I don't think about it all on a daily basis. Or even a weekly basis now, but its all tucked up in my mind somewhere, waiting for the flood gates to open.

One day last year in early April I took my camera and spent hours photographing my neighborhood.  I stayed mostly in the confines of what I had defined as my barrio.  The streets I walked to school, the markets where I bought my groceries, the placas where I drank my cortados, the bars where I had become a foreign regular.  

On that day, I wandered around in the warm sun and actually LOOKED at everything that surrounded me.  Everything I took for granted in my waking life.  The beauty of Gracia was in the paint peeling off of stenciled balconies and beautiful, colorful graffiti that tagged storefront doors, and the generations of Gracians who lived their days together in a rhythmic harmony--  through my camera lens I saw it all so clearly.  And for that I am grateful.

The picture above is one of my favorites from the day.  I was photographing the blue graffiti, but stopped when the old man and boy were passing me.  When I raised my camera again, they were both in the frame.  To me that photograph shows the heartbeat of Gracia, of Barcelona as a whole really.  The vibrant color, the dilapidated beauty and the generations of people who bring the city to life.