Good times, baby. These are the good times.

[worthyopponent]

In the spirit of Faith Sucking at Everything, I give you a top five list. Please join us and, like I said earlier, feel free to rant at yourself as much as you feel is necessary. I often find it makes me feel marginally better to just bitch at myself for a while.

Top Five Things You Suck at Right Now

1. Waking up. This should be no real suprise, but honestly it's gotten quite ridiculous the past few days. I mean, I'm the girl who would stay up till three working on a paper and then actually get out of bed again at six o'clock in order to finish it. I've tried to do a toned-down version of that sort of thing lately, by waking up an hour or two before classes so I can do research or do research or do research before I actually meet with my professor, and I've failed miserably every time. I've been late to work every day for a week now, and the average, average time I get to the office is 9:45. For an office that opens at 8:30. I haven't been in any earlier than 9:15, and last Friday I didn't make it in till 10:45. This is bad. I am only an intern; an intern who, if at all remotely possible, would like to have a full-time job with this company someday, and I really, really cannot afford to look expendable and lazy and unprofessional and ungrateful and expendable, and did I mention lazy? And I've been getting a ton of sleep, so that's not even the problem, and I don't know what the problem is, but it is not. a good. thing.
   
   
2. Keeping in touch. This, too, is no real suprise, because you have all been noticing, no doubt, that I have not been keeping in touch with you. And I feel bad about this, really I do. And there are some people I'm better at -- people I live with, or Dana, who calls on a regular basis -- but even when people do call, and even if people do leave a message, too often I delete the message saying, "Yeah, I'll call them later," and then I think I've called them, and I haven't. (Case in point: fiestychele, who will hopefully be getting a call from me this weekend and will hopefully not be too pissed off at me for taking this long to get back to her.) I haven't talked to Nate in months, I went for a week without calling my mother, which never, ever happens, I've been meaning to call my father and thank him for my birthday present for days, I haven't talked to Whitney since I left town, and I haven't talked to my sister since then, either. I just -- I don't know. There really is no excuse, and I just suck at it right now.
   
   
3. Being productive. The waking up has a little to do with it, but not much. I'm in that phase I go through every single semester where I just don't want to do anything and I feel like I'm up to my eyeballs in work and there is no respite, and that phase is hitting a little earlier than usual this year. But you know what? My life's not that hard. I only have two real classes, one of which I love to bits, and I only work 15 hours or so a week, I'm only in class two days out of the week, and I have all the time in the world to a) work on my thesis and b) play around and better myself and accomplish other things, write fic and do research and bike around the lakes and take photos and write thank-you notes and make jewelry, but I just feel like I can't, like I'm up to my eyeballs in work and there is no respite, and it just paralyzes me. I've been reading a lot for myself lately, which if nothing else at least gives me some sense of accomplishment, but it doesn't get my work done and in the long run doesn't make me feel any better about my academic situation. And, you know, other people can do things -- get their master's and skate in the Olympics, or teach nuclear physiology at Brown and ski in the Olympics, or get straight A's while they start their own charitable foundation and work full-time and raise purebred poodles, but I'm just not one of those people. I like to think I could be, and realistically speaking, there's nothing stopping me from becoming that sort of person, who I both hate and admire. There's nothing stopping me but myself and whatever hangups I have or think that I have, and I don't like to think about it too much because the more I think about it the worse I feel that I'm not already on that path towards greatness, so let's just focus on getting the thesis done, shall we?
   
   
4. Handling money. You know, usually if I'm broke I can at least tell you where the money went. But about three weeks ago I experienced the exhilarating high of having my bank balance being over $1,000 (which definitely hasn't happened at least since the summer, if not since last summer), and I got paid on Wednesday, and now after the cable check I wrote to Shelby goes through, I'll have about five dollars in my account. I don't think Wells Fargo has any idea what to do with me. And I haven't bought an iPod or anything, so I'm not even 100% sure where it's gone. Looking at my statement (thank God for online banking) I think that, since I had so much money, I did what I've been talking myself out of doing at the first of the month for months now: I just spent money. Being so broke for so long I got used to never, ever buying anything for myself that totaled more than eight dollars, and I'd actually gotten pretty good at it. But last month was my first paycheck from Meadowbrook, and my birthday, and I was going home for the weekend. So a lot of it went to booze and books and gas for the trip. A lot of it, almost in equal percentages. And I owed Shelby the $80 I borrowed from her for Scotch-and-Fondue night, and we didn't pay the cable and electricity bills at the beginning of the month, so. I guess it does all make sense in the end. But here's the rub: I like to think I'm frugal, and I used to be really, really stingy, and I was always good with money when I never had it, or when it was given to me by my parents. That covers all of high school and the first year of college, when I got money in $20 increments for gas or a movie or whatever. After the first year of college, I was making my own money working for Bill, so suddenly I was making a thousand dollars a month, which was more than I'd ever seen in my life, and was way more than I could have spent even in my wildest dreams. I made a pretty good dent, though. I don't know how I could have lived in this city on $700 a month (including $400 for rent), but I did it for a semester, and there was always money left over, and it really, really irritates and baffles me that now I have over $1,000 a month coming in and somehow I'm still broke and it doesn't seem like I spend nearly enough money for that to be possible, but it is.
   
   
5. I, um, actually can't think of five, unless my fifth one would be life, or telling you the difference between a triple axel and a triple lutz, and it totally could. Those of you joining in the fun hereby have special dispensation to have either four or six things on your list, if you can't think of five.