Venturing Into the Unknown

I have put in my two weeks.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, I guess I just surprised myself at how soon “sooner” happened. It’s a place I never like to be. Unemployed. I love change; embrace it actually. It’s failing that is the struggle for me. The fact that I have to put myself out there, every morsel of dedication I have towards my passion, I am now trusting that I will be successful. I have to be successful or I’ve failed myself and failed my dedication to write. I am taking that leap of faith in myself to do bigger and better things and it all beginnings on 02/27/12.

 

What Holiday Shopping Will Do To A Girl.

Ah, the ever dreaded weekend before the Christmas holiday. No one likes to venture out during this period of mad-house frenzy except the part of society hell bent on finding the last minute deals and those unfortunate absent-minded souls who realize their doom all too late.

As for me, I usually fall into the plan-ahead category of society and do not dare fall prey to such a government induced plan of mass consumerism. Unfortunately, this year I fell. Fell into the depths of holiday spending. And what makes it almost unbearable to give recognition to, was that it happened the weekend before Christmas.

I arrived at the mall after nearly car colliding with one from the “absent-minded” category and once inside the mall I quickly realized that people are NOT kind during the holiday shopping season. This boiling contempt for those who would rather purposely impose their vehicle onto you gave me a reason to want to spend more. I believe that has something to do with the “feel-good” endorphins that shopping releases in people. So after dealing with road-ragers, parking-pushers, and lolley-gaggers (obviously at the mall with no intensions of actually shopping), I decide at least I could cash in on what was left. I did the complete opposite of what my “plan-ahead” self would do. I began shopping…for myself. I went through the gamut of clothes, makeup, accessories but what I truly found to be the best self-giving gift was the ever so desirable 2011 Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook, edited by the great America’s Test Kitchen (ATK).

I’ve wanted it for years, mainly because of my secret dream. If I could learn the basics of cooking set forth and made perfect by ATK that I could become this underground chef, familiarizing society with the greatness of biodynamic agriculture, who wrote for prestigious publishing companies on the importance of food culture and awareness, and who would never have to go hungry or poor again. But I digress. This dream flooded my mind as soon as I stepped foot into the book store to purchase Chelsea Handler’s My Horizontal Life. Yes, that’s right. I went into Barnes and Noble to purchase an autobiography about the comedian’s hysterical one-night-stands and wound up purchasing ATK’s Cookbook as well. Go figure.

It’s been officially 3 weeks since that escapade and I am just now recovering from the financial downfall of the evening. My lesson from all this… other than the financial aspect? I’m not sure I learned one considering I walked away unscathed and with my own presents. Did learn to make a vodka pie crust however – the best I’ve ever had.

The Quasidesperate Me

20 minutes ago I dropped my husband off in the yet-to-be-popularly-discovered neighborhood of Georgetown for some live music and beers with friends. I now sit in our tiny studio apartment; mind wondering.

I want to be there, anywhere, just not at my desk trying to edit an article for school from a scholarly journal about the active stabilization for a robotized beating heart – part of a biomedical discipline I know nothing about. Again, mind wondering.

I should be studying. Editing. Analyzing. Critiquing. Nope, I’m not. My mind is wondering.

After I left my husband on the dimly lit street near the bar, I decided to drive home over the lower Spokane bridge and noticed how eerily empty the streets were. I figured I had the time, so I drove slow on the drawbridge over the Duwamish. It was the kind of grey concrete, hazy tan depiction of an evening that you would see in a low-budget,
industrial-ridden, apocalyptic film about a quasidesperate humanity nearing extinction; quite reminiscent of anything you would hear off The Wall by Pink Floyd. As I approached the Delridge, W Marginal, Spokane three-way intersection in the midst of my War of the Worlds fanaticizing, I found my thoughts interrupted by the screeching reality of school and the heavy load of work sitting back home on my desk – far more sinister than my fantasy world I was engulfed in.

20 minutes later here I sit. Dramatic! Questioning if the fantasy world I’d dreamt up was really a subconscious cry of
my own quasidesperate self.

Maybe school is getting the best of me, already. Or maybe I just need a good science fiction novel to read. I’m taking suggestions.