So I got to file my taxes for free about a half an hour ago. Which made my night until I found out I'm only getting back half of what I thought I was going to. That hurts my heart a bit right now; I was counting on that money to catch up my car payments, and pay some unpaid parking tickets, and now I can't even catch up the car payments. Yikes.
I really need to get that information to Davenport so I can see what classes work out for me, and so I can work out some financial aid business. I know it's dumb, but I miss those refund checks a lot. I hope that I get a good one and can take care of some things.
I got the job at Office Max. I have to go tomorrow for a drug test, and as soon as they get the results from that, I can start working. I'm excited. It's $8/hour, and seems fun enough. It's a very chill location according to Josh, the guy I interviewed with first. He was excellent. So was Terry, the store manager who I interviewed with yesterday. And Renee (I'm not sure what she is, but she does orientations, so she's something) seems nice also. This will be a refreshing change from food service, I hope.
Liz offered me a job at Foremost. I want to take it, because it's $8.75/hour, 30 hours a week, and 9-3. However, it's 9-3...which means I can't do the Office Max job, and when school stuff starts, I can't really say yes either. I will need to call Liz tomorrow and see if we can't work something out. The Foremost job would be guaranteed hours. And she said there's a raise after 3 months. Plus probably the option to switch positions. I am going to ask her if there's something that's more fluid with hours...I'm just confused. And stressed a bit. I want to get Ann paid off from that damn lease - I can't believe I still owe on that - and I
have to get my car payments caught up. We keep having problems with Wells Fargo adding insurance on it that we don't need, so the payments are over $430 a month. I've only been paying $360 a month, because they've been consistently 2 months late since September and I've got to include late fees. But they would only be $323 regularly if the bank didn't take it upon itself to add insurance I don't need. We have insurance on it, and I've faxed the proof twice, but they haven't credited the account yet. So now it's a problem because they're saying I'm not even making the minimum payments every month, but I would be if they would take off the insurance retroactively like they said they would when I called them in October. It's irritating. And I'm stressed out.
In a non-depression kind of way, I have been giving thought to the point of life these days. It seems so grim. You work your entire life to have money to eat, live somewhere, drive a car, go places, see things, talk to people, etc. If you plan correctly then you can eventually stop working and still have money to hopefully lead a similar lifestyle, or at least the lifestyle that you planned on living when you started to save money. But if you don't plan, you have to just keep working until...something happens. You die. You have a windfall. In any case, I can't ever forsee myself being in a position to plan. Right now I can't see myself being able to catch up my car payments in the next 2 months. And I feel like it's so pointless to exist if all you're doing it working until you die. Even if you don't have to work until you die, what's the point of existing just to be here for a number of years, eat, sleep, travel, meet people....and then die. Cease to exist. I stumble over whether or not there is any kind of "afterlife", I lean towards there not being one, and I wonder why obtaining a place in an afterlife is a goal of life. What is so great about where your soul goes if the trip there is tedious. I remember being quite young, probably 5 or so, and crying to my mom because I didn't want to live forever. I didn't want to get old, and die, and go to heaven because living forever sounded awful. What is there to do for forever? I think she told me that you wouldn't ever be bored, you would just be eternally happy. Eternity. It's an unfathomable concept for the human brain, and I have been spinning my head around it for at least 18 years, and it has freaked me out
every time. I have somewhat of a panic attack, actually. I think that's why I lean away from there being an afterlife. Most of the time, I think there's some type of higher power in the universe. (The Universe is a whole other unfathomable concept, but it doesn't make me short of breath, like Eternity does.) My problem with the idea of a higher power is benevolency. Why does any kind of higher power, especially one that is indifferent-going-on-vindictive, want a bunch of souls hanging around for...ever? Perhaps souls are like energy; never created nor destroyed. Maybe souls just...cease to exist upon death. I think that's what I want to happen.
But if souls cease to exist when someone dies, then I
really feel like there's no point to prance around Earth for 1-100 years. So what if you find a cure for auto-immune diseases? You're only delaying the inevitable nonexistance of someone who is part of an overpopulation problem anyway. Free spirits have the concept right when they just live in the moment. I might die tomorrow, and might cease to exist, and I won't be worrying about my overdue car payment. I might not die for another 80 years, and might have many more overdue car payments, and might spend those 80 years being full of stress for one reason or another; for spending my life wanting something else to be there.
I feel that emptiness that everyone talks about. That every book and movie writes their stories around. I'm lacking something, and I'm not really sure that success (and the inevitable money that comes with it) would even fix it. Maybe it would. I always feel good when I can buy things for people; presents, things they need, CD's I think they would like. It makes me feel more full than how I feel right now, sitting here thinking about how much money I owe different people for different things, and how that money isn't going to magically appear from anywhere. I say "I love working" a lot. I don't love working. I love money; something I also say a lot. And money comes from working. But I want money to come from being good at something, and fulfilling some desire of mine, not from suggestively selling Absolut in someone's bloody mary.
Sorting through this in my mind would be easier if I didn't feel differently about it every day. Sometimes I think, all I need to do it get back into school, and finish up the biology business, and keep plugging along through research projects, and papers, and peer reviews, and stupid jobs, and crazy professors until one day I'm 35, I've got a Ph.D., and I'm pulling 6-figures for gel electrophoresis. I won't have any idea how 13 years went by or how to get them back, I'll be in debt past my ears, and I will still have MS. But that scenario appeals to me because I will be doing something. I will eventually accomplish something that I want to do, and it will occur as I like it; it will just happen. My favorite happenings have been when they
just happened with the natural flow of things. Other times I think I can stay just like I am right now. Waiting tables, or making lattes, always planning my next step but never quite taking it. And I'll still become 35, but this time I'll still be making under $20,000 a year, 13 years still would have passed and it would have been fast but at the same time would have felt every miserable moment, and I'll still be like I am now; debt-ridden, stressed, and diseased. But this time, also unaccomplished. I think that's what I want people to say about me when I die: Alesheia was accomplished. At first, it can seem like a cop-out, a nice to say that someone wasn't quite successful. But I feel as though it's more than being successful. To be accomplished means that I would have done what I set out to do. Perhaps they're the same thing, but "successful" is commonplace.
I feel like I don't have it together like everyone around me does. The people around me have a plan, and the means to carry out their plan. It's like somewhere along the line I didn't get on the same boat everyone else did, and one day I finally realized that but it was too late to find a port to board. That scares me. Because you hear all of these stories of people that board anytime, but I don't know how to get there, and feel like it's impossible. Not impossible. But impractical given the circumstances. I can't just throw the finger to every day essentials; my car, a place to live, a job, eating food. I don't spend money so frivolously that a drastic lifestyle change would turn my world around. Something in my life is just different than the people around me, and this is one of the few times in my life that my skills of observation are failing me. It happens to be a huge failure. I'm almost 22, and that's not old, but 26, 30, 35 are also not far away and I can't be here when that age comes. I won't be here, even if I don't do anything differently. As I said before, things
happen and I adjust to them, and I will find myself somewhere. I could stumble into some ridiculous 9-5 somewhere, get a management job for some corporate retail store, make enough money to make a car payment and pay rent and eat, and do things and see people...but never really save anything, and never do anything spectacular. (P.S., the future of my health insurance weighs heavily on my mind and stress, and I can't go into it right now, but yikes.)
To top off everything else, I've been thinking a lot about school lately, and all of those jobs that I always thought would be fun but I never thought of seriously are now quite a bit more serious in my mind. But I have to research autoimmune disease. So I have to do biology. I have to stop being frivolous. Frivolity doesn't have promising statistics for it's leading to accomplishment. I have to go somewhere next.
