Eat Shit

An important part of growing up is realizing that the majority of modern life is one huge fucking lie. It starts at a fairly young age, when you realize that your parents have been lying to you about any/all imaginary characters (tooth fairy, santa, easter bunny, etc), and continues all the way up through adulthood when you realize that people (including yourself) lie... well, all the time. Most of them aren't even trivial verbal or written lies, like those found in RSVP phone calls, on job resumes, and all over the news and advertising. Nope, most of them are even subtler, silent illusory lies that can be so buried and suppressed below a person's outer appearance and character that they can go unnoticed and un-dealt with for an entire lifetime.

Enough emoness for one day. One of the most prevalent (verbal) lies in a young adult's life is the notion that "You can be whatever you want to be!!!" "Dream like there's no tomorrow!"

Well, fact is, you probably can't, but should do your best to succeed with whatever shit life throws at you regardless. Unfortunately, this truth doesn't exactly look as nice written out next to cute puppies on a colorful Scholastic poster.

You can work your ass off saving up money to take that test to get into that college to major in that degree to apply for that job only to... not get the job. Or, get that job and be left horribly unsatisfied. And of course, there's the failing at any one of those points along the way that can make you want to give up your dreams altogether.

An even more important part of growing up is learning, or simply FORCING yourself to accept, the reality that one must (for sanity's sake) adjust to life's curveballs and make the most of situations. As one of my favorite authors wrote, "Nobody teaches life anything" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera), we must accept the fact that life isn't going to change for us, it was here first, bitch! We must must must learn to adapt and apply ourselves wherever the road of life leads us. I'm preparing for the possibility of being hit with this reality all too soon, with grad school applications just around the corner. What if I don't do well on the writing test? What if my GPA is too low? What if I DON'T GET IN??

...to China we go? Who the fuck knows...but life will move on, and you bet your ass I'm in it to love it.

A perfect and, let's face it, dreadfully hilarious, example of the fact that people change their minds constantly is my life. Right now, I have a pretty good idea of my purpose on this Earth, but it hasn't always been like that, and who's to say it always will? An AIM bot (member those?? No? You had real, live, human friends?? Your loss!!) once told me I was the "most fickle person" they'd ever chatted with. This made me both proud of my newfound title and eager to find myself in a situation where I could appropriately whip out the word "fickle" to impress my 11 year old class mates.
Anyway, I would now like to take a moment (or, half of a blog post, whatever) to list just a few of the professions that I've seriously considered pursuing at one point (point = anywhere from a day to ...2 days) in the course of my college career, or what would more accurately be called my "Megan Spends a Total of 408 Hours Online Trying to Figure Out What She Wants to do With Her Life" phase. Please know that I am not exaggerating any of the following information, and have parents/friends to back up my claims.

[Quick background note: I'm a bit of a retard fanatic (blame Star from Rio), and have finally decided that my place in the world belongs to Special Education. So that's what I'm studying as of now. I know, I know what you're thinking, the only thing that could make me more of a white girl stereotype would be majoring in either communications or psychology. God damnit. Well, before you judge too harshly, please know that I put a lot of serious thought and effort into choosing my major, and like, totally used to want to be other, random non-white-girl things... please see awe-inspiring list below]

On to the list!

1. a professional ice skater (I hear it's really easy to get into at age 17 with no previous experience)
2. a funeral director (seriously?? seriously. I think I just liked the ring to the title "Megan the Mortician")
3. someone who makes prosthetics (I forget what they're called? And why the fuck I was interested in becoming one...)
4 a "geographer" (If the possession of 2 maps and a globe doesn't guarantee you a job in this field, I don't know what does)
5. a mathematician (I never actually took advanced college math, I just wanted to sit at a desk and add fractions all day. And wear like, cute glasses or something.)
6. an air traffic controller (WTF???)
7. a librarian (I imagined myself smelling new books & reading Nordic mythology all day... 2 things that I don't think any librarian has ever done..)
8. and (I love this one) someone who just does Peace Corps missions over and over until they die ...in a 3rd world country ... from malaria

Ah, college girls.
I'm sure I'm forgetting many others (My parents once composed a list of about 30 that they'd heard me express interest in), but as you can see, I was (literally) all over the map, and by the time I realized that god damnit I was headed for the inevitable, ultimate white girl stereotype of education, I'd actually learned quite a bit of information about...pretty much every other occupation. Thus came my nickname "college counselor", as I began advising all of my friends on how to navigate through their major's coursework and achieve their specific degrees. I'm pretty sure it's the only reason some people kept in contact with me. Why not study to become a college counselor you ask? a) not enough retards go to college and b) It's even MORE white girl than studying special education.

To sum up my most random, off track blog post yet:

Life brings you shitty shit. I encourage you to (in the words of a Tenderloin crack whore I overheard this morning), "Eat your shit. You know, like, pick it up and eat it."