status: alive
Hey there, internet. I'm hardly at my best just now, but I can safely say I am no longer at my worst, either. I still haven't heard anything final or official from Duquesne (which makes sense, as the weekend just ended), and I feel like maybe I'm pulling myself together enough to try to... do something. What, I don't know yet. I've had a lot of advice coming at me from all directions -- and thank you, guys, you are really gorgeous -- but, you know, a lot of it contradicts each other and everybody seems to want me to set a plan in motion that will result in me coming to live with or near them (which is great, and I find it extremely amusing, but I can only move to one state at a time!). (However, if the Doctor would like to advise me on a plan that involves running away with him and Amy and Rory and possibly doing some novel research on the way, as well as buying me a crazy amount of time and possible leverage to Get An Education, I would definitely put that at the top of the list of ideas. Um.)
I haven't responded to all of your comments yet, but I deeply appreciate your support and advice, even if, you know, everybody has different ideas that they are all convinced are the Right Way To Go. ^-^ I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment, but I have a lot of things to work out, so.
One thing I do know is that if I can't go to college in the fall, even if I swallow my bile and despair and enrol in a community college, I can't do it in this town, because barring a miracle there are no jobs. (And the library... so small... okay, priorities, Jo.)
What's the chance of getting into a school for the next semester? And what sort of chance might I have with a college that waitlisted, then didn't have room for me, on my first go (Hampshire)?
Ugh, the more I think about this stuff... going through all of this again, with ever-decreasing belief in my ability to get any kind of result (this is a thing that happens to me, okay? Even the bookstore job I worked really hard to get slowly dropped me off the payroll until I didn't have a job any more instead of just laying me off properly and cleanly), I feel my stomach beginning to drop out, as though I'm in a very deep-falling elevator. An elevator of despair.
I wish that I didn't feel like such a little girl, especially when I talk to anyone else. Jobless, collegeless, and living with her parents! And we all thought she showed so much promise!
(And stupidly, one thing I keep thinking in all of this is that now I am never, ever going to get a decent camera with a real proper lens and a neck strap and things. That was going to be my next save-for thing after the laptop! But right after the laptop my job disappeared into the aether! Sigh. Oh my silly little rectangle of a camera, I know you do your best, but I want to be a real photographer! :/)
--
Well, after all this nonsense at least fate seems to be trying to make up for things -- well, not make up, because it would take a vast and glittering array of awesome even to come close, but a lot of tiny lovely things have been happening these last several days, reminding me that the world is, on occasion, a very beautiful place. I wished on the first star of the evening that awful day, and just as I did a firefly glowed to life a direct line beneath, rising from the muddle of weeds and concrete around the telephone pole. Saturday morning, Mum woke me up with a cup of coffee, and later there was a trip to the Goodwill warehouse and a sale there, where I acquired a better copy of Anne of Windy Poplars (I am so picky about my Montgomerys that I can only comfortably read the classic vintage paperbacks -- the modern reprints look the same, but are really shabby quality for the most part; the type looks like Times New Roman, for heaven's sake), an Edwardian schoolgirl dress with a pointed white collar and two rows of black buttons down the front, a lovely grey wool puffed-sleeve blazer, a vintage flowered skirt, and a t-shirt bearing a picture of the Colosseum and the legend THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE ROME, which makes me feel a bit like sarahtales' Mae Crawford. The other Goodwill yielded awesome brown buckle boots and purple knee socks. Which made up for the fact (almost) that the library was disappointing and had no new books for me to read at all.
(Almost, because... books are my comfort food. When I am really, really upset, I buy new books. As shopping therapy goes, this is not only a) usually cheaper, but b) undeniably and long-lastingly satisfying. But... any books I order right now will take ages to get here and I need something now. And mostly I don't want to buy books I haven't read yet, especially when I have so little money. I wish there was a book Netflix! Or my inter-library loan was faster and had more books in it -- I haven't been able to get any of yuki_onna's books, or anything newer than six months. Also it takes about two weeks for the first book to show up -- four or five to get all of the ones I ordered, generally. Or I could stumble into one of those gigantic cheap used book sales my more urban friends have glorious luck at. Or someone abandoned a box full of books on the street -- magically excellent ones -- instead of the usual boxes full of kittens or puppies, and I could adopt them. Sigh.)
(Although they did find me Thomas Wharton's The Logogryph, which is not only weird and Canadian and obscure, but also currently out of print and depressingly expensive I WANT MY OWNNNN. So I can't always be so harsh on them.)
Yesterday Dad took me and Heidi and Heidi's friend Grace to the roller skating rink, where I put in my earbuds to block out the Miley Cyrus and... whatever the kids are listening to these days... with Patrick Wolf and Florence + the Machine and Paloma Faith and Owl City and Pale Young Gentlemen and the Dubliners and Crooked Still and the Duhks and Benny Goodman and um the awesome swing cover of "Bad Romance". I love roller skating, and the rink is very cheap on Sundays and Wednesdays, and since it's only been a few weeks since my last visit it only took me ten minutes to get my skating legs back, instead of the customary thirty to forty-five. Ah, sailing around the rink, hearing the rush of wood, and falling over very dramatically! I have an absolutely mind-boggling mutant bruise on my left knee that actually barely hurts at all but looks evil, and I caught myself with my right hand once when I fell and my wrist is extremely sore -- but it's all been worth it!
And last night my brother found a scrawny black kitten across the street, and we played with him for a while in the dimming twilight, and I taught Leandra that camels say "spit spit spit" and we danced to gospel choirs covering Bob Dylan.
Also I've been mainlining Veronica Mars (again).
So the world's not lost. I'm just a bit lost in it, I suppose. And I wish things would just proceed simply for once, because I've had about enough of complications.
I haven't responded to all of your comments yet, but I deeply appreciate your support and advice, even if, you know, everybody has different ideas that they are all convinced are the Right Way To Go. ^-^ I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment, but I have a lot of things to work out, so.
One thing I do know is that if I can't go to college in the fall, even if I swallow my bile and despair and enrol in a community college, I can't do it in this town, because barring a miracle there are no jobs. (And the library... so small... okay, priorities, Jo.)
What's the chance of getting into a school for the next semester? And what sort of chance might I have with a college that waitlisted, then didn't have room for me, on my first go (Hampshire)?
Ugh, the more I think about this stuff... going through all of this again, with ever-decreasing belief in my ability to get any kind of result (this is a thing that happens to me, okay? Even the bookstore job I worked really hard to get slowly dropped me off the payroll until I didn't have a job any more instead of just laying me off properly and cleanly), I feel my stomach beginning to drop out, as though I'm in a very deep-falling elevator. An elevator of despair.
I wish that I didn't feel like such a little girl, especially when I talk to anyone else. Jobless, collegeless, and living with her parents! And we all thought she showed so much promise!
(And stupidly, one thing I keep thinking in all of this is that now I am never, ever going to get a decent camera with a real proper lens and a neck strap and things. That was going to be my next save-for thing after the laptop! But right after the laptop my job disappeared into the aether! Sigh. Oh my silly little rectangle of a camera, I know you do your best, but I want to be a real photographer! :/)
--
Well, after all this nonsense at least fate seems to be trying to make up for things -- well, not make up, because it would take a vast and glittering array of awesome even to come close, but a lot of tiny lovely things have been happening these last several days, reminding me that the world is, on occasion, a very beautiful place. I wished on the first star of the evening that awful day, and just as I did a firefly glowed to life a direct line beneath, rising from the muddle of weeds and concrete around the telephone pole. Saturday morning, Mum woke me up with a cup of coffee, and later there was a trip to the Goodwill warehouse and a sale there, where I acquired a better copy of Anne of Windy Poplars (I am so picky about my Montgomerys that I can only comfortably read the classic vintage paperbacks -- the modern reprints look the same, but are really shabby quality for the most part; the type looks like Times New Roman, for heaven's sake), an Edwardian schoolgirl dress with a pointed white collar and two rows of black buttons down the front, a lovely grey wool puffed-sleeve blazer, a vintage flowered skirt, and a t-shirt bearing a picture of the Colosseum and the legend THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE ROME, which makes me feel a bit like sarahtales' Mae Crawford. The other Goodwill yielded awesome brown buckle boots and purple knee socks. Which made up for the fact (almost) that the library was disappointing and had no new books for me to read at all.
(Almost, because... books are my comfort food. When I am really, really upset, I buy new books. As shopping therapy goes, this is not only a) usually cheaper, but b) undeniably and long-lastingly satisfying. But... any books I order right now will take ages to get here and I need something now. And mostly I don't want to buy books I haven't read yet, especially when I have so little money. I wish there was a book Netflix! Or my inter-library loan was faster and had more books in it -- I haven't been able to get any of yuki_onna's books, or anything newer than six months. Also it takes about two weeks for the first book to show up -- four or five to get all of the ones I ordered, generally. Or I could stumble into one of those gigantic cheap used book sales my more urban friends have glorious luck at. Or someone abandoned a box full of books on the street -- magically excellent ones -- instead of the usual boxes full of kittens or puppies, and I could adopt them. Sigh.)
(Although they did find me Thomas Wharton's The Logogryph, which is not only weird and Canadian and obscure, but also currently out of print and depressingly expensive I WANT MY OWNNNN. So I can't always be so harsh on them.)
Yesterday Dad took me and Heidi and Heidi's friend Grace to the roller skating rink, where I put in my earbuds to block out the Miley Cyrus and... whatever the kids are listening to these days... with Patrick Wolf and Florence + the Machine and Paloma Faith and Owl City and Pale Young Gentlemen and the Dubliners and Crooked Still and the Duhks and Benny Goodman and um the awesome swing cover of "Bad Romance". I love roller skating, and the rink is very cheap on Sundays and Wednesdays, and since it's only been a few weeks since my last visit it only took me ten minutes to get my skating legs back, instead of the customary thirty to forty-five. Ah, sailing around the rink, hearing the rush of wood, and falling over very dramatically! I have an absolutely mind-boggling mutant bruise on my left knee that actually barely hurts at all but looks evil, and I caught myself with my right hand once when I fell and my wrist is extremely sore -- but it's all been worth it!
And last night my brother found a scrawny black kitten across the street, and we played with him for a while in the dimming twilight, and I taught Leandra that camels say "spit spit spit" and we danced to gospel choirs covering Bob Dylan.
Also I've been mainlining Veronica Mars (again).
So the world's not lost. I'm just a bit lost in it, I suppose. And I wish things would just proceed simply for once, because I've had about enough of complications.