Post-College 1

It has been an interesting summer, to say the least.

I've learned how to play guitar, which has been awesome, though it feels weird typing with little or no feeling in my fingertips.
Feels like I'm wearing band-aids over the fingers of my left hand.

I'm finished with undergrad-level college.
Of course, I was working almost nonstop for my last year of it, so I don't suddenly have a massive glut of free time.

And there's also the looming spectre of an August without school.
...is it sad that THAT spectre is the one casting a shadow over everything, and not the spectre of trying to find a job that can actually pay for shit in this economy?

BTW, screw spell check, I spell it the creepy way, not the could-be-the-name-of-a-stock-character-who-wears-spectacles way.
...gotta right
.........rite
.........wright
.........write that down for later.
And we wonder why people have trouble learning English.


Even as I acknowledge that the lack of a creative writing option would have killed my college life in its infancy, I don't feel qualified to do anything I wasn't qualified to do after high school.

I feel like my whole college experience, while wonderful and fulfilling and spouse-providing, hasn't prepared me for "adulthood".

I also feel like it gave me more tools for a journey I was already on rather than prepare me for a journey which would begin at graduation.

I was a writer BEFORE going to college to learn how to write.
Fact: College exposed me to a lot of different viewpoints I'd never considered.
Fact: College gave me a tonload more directions in which to potentially take my writing (especially comic book writing, an area I'd never even THOUGHT ABOUT doing beforehand)

Am I a better writer? Hell yes.
Am I a better person? Also hell yes, especially after everything my wife and I have overcome together.

Do I feel qualified to do ANY job which could pay the bills right now?
NO.

I've spent my entire life being told that someday, I would gain the magical key called COLLEGE DEGREE, and open the mystical, divine gateway to happiness known throughout the cosmos as the FULL-TIME JOB.
Slash CAREER.

This FULL-TIME JOB wouldn't be like the other jobs I've had.
There wouldn't be a paper or online application, no dingy office where a bitter old woman would ask deep questions about hours of availability or how much weight you could lift and carry.
The FULL-TIME JOB wouldn't be something you slogged through day after day, praying for 5 PM or Friday.
It would be a happy place that you couldn't wait to get to in the morning and hated to leave at night.

And best of all, the FULL-TIME JOB would give you enough money (for your happy-go-lucky time!) for you to own a home! In a nice neighborhood!
And you wouldn't have to worry about getting fired, because only those who hold the COLLEGE DEGREE key would even be allowed in, and those who hold the key are indispensable!
The key is too valuable and rare to let someone who holds it get away.



...oh wait.
I think when the college degree no longer required a person to PHYSICALLY SIT IN A CLASSROOM, its value started plummeting.
If the value of the thing is in the toils one must undergo to attain it, then the easier the path gets, the more the value shrinks.
Thus, if anyone with an Internet connection can get a degree, and get it quickly, then what value is there in it?

Excepting, of course, medical, law, etc. where the curriculum CANNOT be simplified due to the vital nature of the field (...did I just call LAWYERS a vital field?)

I'm supposed to be a fully mature ADULT by this point, and I'm still scared shitless anytime money issues come into play (thank God my wife isn't), which have been coming into play more often due to my ill-fated attempt at a private Christian college.

...which, ill-fated though it may have been in the academic spectrum, led to my marriage, which in many ways is the only thing keeping me going right now.

I suppose I could turn to religion, but I spent my childhood having the philosophy of Christianity (as opposed to anything meaningful in the emotional or genuinely spiritual spectrum) hammered into my head, and it still is any time I'm around my dad.

It's not like I disbelieve in God or anything.
Nothing but the Divine could have made me stay when my wife's late mother was diagnosed with cancer, and we'd only been dating a few weeks.
I was an arrogant bastard back then, so it's not like I can take credit for not only sticking around, but HELPING.
Spent two New Year's Eves in a hospital lobby.

I have seen God working in my life, and no amount of despair or anxiety can change what I have experienced.

But I feel as though I'm on the edge of a precipice in the midst of a basejumping event.
Everyone else (my fellow graduates) seems well-prepared, loaded up with safety gear (a strong support system, personal maturity, and useful skills) in addition to their actual basejumping gear (their degrees).

I, on the other hand, am wearing a "Musicians Duet Better" t-shirt and jeans, with a backpack full of manuscripts.
Even so, my entire family is yelling "Jump! You can do it!"

My wife stands nearby, gathering her safety equipment and putting on pieces of her suit, a rope connecting us for the journey down, almost ready to take the plunge.

And I know I should jump, but it feels like jumping would be disastrous because everything which should have prepared me for this moment of flight will simply weigh me down.




...hope you enjoyed the analogy.
I really should post more often. Apparently my brain has plenty of hoarded literary vomit to spew.