Monday, April 2, 2012

Mysteries and Tracey Gold

I am getting pretty sick of my life, you guys. Ever since I graduated from nursing school and landed my first nursing job, it seems like there's nothing new on the horizon for me. I feel like I'm walking in lock-step with the rest of the disenfranchised human race to my death. Is that too heavy? 

 
It's just, there's still so much I want to do. Like for instance, I want to captain a riverboat. I want to swim with wild dolphins. I want to see sharks from a boat, and sleep in a hammock on a beach. I'm not sure if I can realize any of these dreams because I'm stuck in a rut--a bad rut. And I might be too fat for a hammock.

You wanna know what I did today? I woke up at about 10:15 am, got up to wash my face and told myself while I was in the bathroom that when I got back to my room I was going to go right back to sleep. But then I decided to take a shower and get dressed, because I thought that then when I laid down and fell back asleep, it would be more like taking a nap and less like sleeping in until 1:00 pm. But of course, after I showered I was awake. So I decided to eat a bunch of honey roasted peanuts and watch one of the dozens of episodes of 48 Hours that I have taped off of TLC. Let me just digress for a moment to discuss the emotional ramifications of watching an endless string of 48 Hours episodes. It makes you feel like at any moment one of your close family members could snap, drag you into the garage, stab you 28 times, dress you in clothes you would never pick out for yourself, shove you into the trunk of a car and then drive that car to a bad part of town, leave it (and you) there, and then walk home while making phone calls to your friends and family asking them if they've seen you because you never came home from work and you're always on time. I watched an episode of 48 Hours, telling myself that when it was over I would get up and walk the dog. But when it was over, I decided to watch Face of Evil, this old Lifetime movie starring Tracey Gold as an evil co-ed who kills a girl she meets in an airport, then shoves the girl's body into a suitcase, CHECKS the suitcase, then flies to New Hampshire without incident and throws the suitcase into a pit on a construction site that is soon to be covered with cement and proceeds to take over the girl's life while simultaneously seducing her rich roommate's rich, lonely daddy. It is an amazing gem of a movie that opens with a scene in which Tracey Gold is feeding a sparrow while a nearby cat is clearly stalking the little bird and getting ready to pounce. A concerned youngster throws a ball at the bird to get it to fly away when she sees the cat coming near and then says to Tracey Gold's character, "Didn't you see that cat?" To which Tracey Gold replies, "What did you think I was feeding??" Does it get any better than that?? Does it?? I really don't think it does.

But anyway, back to what I'm doing with my life. After I watched Face of Evil, I decided to throw away my half full jar of honey roasted peanuts in an effort to make me stop eating them. I also decided to throw away the rest of the trash in my garbage can. So I grabbed the dog and my bag of trash and went outside into the beautiful, clear, breezy day. I threw away my garbage and walked around, listening to a book on my iPod. The book I'm listening to is about teens with cancer who fall in love and then one of them dies. They also have a blind friend. It's kind of a downer, but if you haven't sensed a pattern yet with the type of media I consume, I like that sort of thing.

While I walked around, I listened to my book, but I also thought about what's wrong with my life. I'm fairly healthy, so I've got that going for me. I'm pretty smart, so I've got that going for me. I have a good job, so that's good. But...I don't know what to do next. I don't have a purpose. I think about going to graduate school, but I don't want to go further into debt. I want to move, but I don't want to leave my family. I want to meet someone, but I'm intimidated by the whole dating thing.

I guess I just want things to be easier than they are. But I know the answer. I need to push myself to do something. Take a step in a direction--any direction. In a few weeks, I am going to face one of my bigger fears--flying in a plane by myself. I know lots of people who fly on a regular basis and it's no big deal to them, but it kinda scares the hell out of me. Even still, I'm doing it. I'm flying across the country and I'm gonna have fun goddamn it! Well I probably won't have fun on the plane, but once I get off the plane, then I'll have fun.  

Me writing this blog post today is sort of an effort to get back to one of my first loves and to one of the things I feel is very true to who I am--writing. Because when you don't know where you're headed next, sometimes it's good to remember who you've always been. Ugh. Wow. Could I be any more cutesy and obnoxious? I'm really annoying myself here. No wonder one of my family members is going to snap and kill me any day now. Just make sure that on my 48 Hours episode when they show pictures of me, they do a voice over about how "vibrant" and "full of life" I was and how I "never had any enemies" and how all I ever did was "spew love and happiness onto everyone" in my life. That's really the truth, anyway.        

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