Second Best/Failing at Life

So here's the thing: I've been second best since I was in the fourth grade.

Maybe even before that, but I can remember it starting in the fourth grade. That was the year I went to a "real" school for the first time (even though it was a ridiculously small private Christian school where four grades were taught in one room). There were only five kids in my grade and only one other girl. And while we were destined to be best friends, we went to the same church and were the only girls in the grade, she was by far the smartest girl in the room (she later ended up going to Colorado School of Mines). She was our teacher's favorite student by a long shot. Her hand writing was perfect, she had an incredibly fast reading rate, she was in advanced math classes, she was a perfect speller, and she was incredibly athletic. Compared to me, who'd never written in cursive before that year, never been tested on reading, and who was an awful speller, mathematician, and athlete, she outshone me by 100,000 watts.

Which, I think, set the stage for the rest of my life. I did alright in middle school, but once I hit high school, I somehow found myself "best friends" with the smartest people I met. Freshman year, it was Alex Deary, the only freshman to be admitted into the Sophomore Honors English classes and who was the only sophomore ever to take Honors American Studies, a class reserved for Juniors. She also got the lead in every play and musical and all the solos in all our choir concerts. Our friendship didn't really make it past sophomore year because she advanced to the "varsity" choir and I remained JV, essentially demolishing our friendship.

After a stint of being friends with only my boyfriend during my sophomore year, I then became friends with Hannah, who was perfect at EVERYTHING. Speech and Debate, Honors English, Biology, Algebra II, the girl could do anything. Plus, she was way rich and the only child at home. A bit quirky, but in a loveable and sweet way that made teachers fall in love with her, particularly our incredible speech and debate coach, who I desperately wanted to love me best. When she moved away in the middle of junior year, it was like the Speech and Debate team had been dealt a wound that it wouldn't recover from for the rest of time.

I went to senior prom with the valedictorian, who, bless his heart, couldn't really carry on a conversation with me with confusing me horribly. My freshman year of college, I bonded with the seventeen year old high school student who had also taken enough college credits to be considered a sophomore in college when she graduated high school. Did I mention that she was also the super-cool/incredibly awesome favorite professor ever's favorite pupil? Not only favorite pupil, but "adopted" daughter. Yeah. When she left for "real" college at an Ivy League school, the English department's staff acted like they'd lost the only hope for the future.

Later, in college, I was constantly a step behind the two girls who graduated early AND gotten their Master's degrees in a year and a half (they're about three-four months older than me). And so it went.

Topping it off, however, is Kris. He's incredibly smart. Beyond incredibly smart, actually. He took the ACT when he was hung-over and got a perfect score. He took every advanced class available at our high school. He won first place in national D&D competitions. He graduated at 17 and went to Colorado School of Mines, where he got an A in the Chem class famous for flunking freshmen.  He constantly outshines his classmates at CSM in every assignment, every time. He has designed computer programs that have won awards and written FRA programs that have become the models for the nation. When he gets to talking about his studies/interests/projects, I'm lucky to understand every other word.  He is beyond amazingly intelligent.

And he's marrying me?

Right now, I'm feeling ridiculously unimpressive. Even though I graduated magna cum laude and had an amazing internship, I haven't been able to get a job. Not in three months. And Kris, who is wonderful, is chock full of ideas of how I could be better looking for a job, or working on improving myself, or exploring careers that would better suited for me than the ones I'm applying for or telling me what I could be doing at my internship to shine brighter, or how I could be working harder...And I can't help but feel like I'm pathetic.

And I really don't understand what he's doing with me.Not at all.

My Life Lately

This week in my world: I am sucking at my new lifestyle change. I don't know if I told you about the WomanCode diet, where you cycle-sync your foods and activities to match the different stages of your menstrual cycle and works with your endocrine system to get the maximum efficiency from your body, etc, etc. I do a lousy job of explaining it, but in case you're interested, you should check out this link to find out more.

It's a really awesome premise and I was (am?) really excited about it. Until I went to my parent's for 4th of July weekend and totally wrecked it. Hamburgers, chips, soda, brats, burritos, etc, etc, etc...holy freaking cow! I brought jogging clothes, but didn't go out once. It was too hot, it was raining, it was the 4th and I deserved a day off.

And it spiraled. Last week was a total mess. We're not doing so hot on money at the moment, what with me still on the hunt, and last week's grocery shopping took me down to $14 left in my bank account (because, you know, saving up 6 months worth of money in case of emergencies is not something you do in college). Which made me super depressed, which meant I ate relatively healthily, but barely made it out of my bed while Kris was in Canon working. 

So yeah...This week I'm trying to get back on track. Kris and I made a budget for how we'll try to spend his monthly paycheck and I've applied for jobs, not careers, in the area to help make ends meet while I try to find a career.

The last four days have been pretty good. We borrowed a dehydrator from his parents and tried making our own beef jerky and dried apple chips. I've been jogging/walking twice, though my right knee isn't liking the jogging so much. And we have a fridge that has enough healthy-ish food in it to last the week.

Maybe by this time next week I'll have a job and life won't be so stressful.  

Day Dreaming

I've started to think about the wedding again lately. It's weird, after we decided to postpone it, and especially after I got the wedding dress that I'm not going to wear, I haven't felt any excitement for the wedding at all. I don't know if it's because I'm jobless and we have no money, so my practical mind is clamping down on my imagination, but it's been the last thing on my mind. I started pinning wedding ideas on Pinterest months and months before Kris proposed, but I haven't looked at those boards in ages.

And now, all of a sudden, I've been taking notice of wedding stuff again. All I feel in regards to it is sheer and utter depression, because I don't see how we could possibly afford a wedding any time within the next year, but I'm looking. And day dreaming.

  And looking at boho chic weddings on Pinterest.

My god, I love the idea of a boho wedding. There's part of me that's such a little love child, who wants to wear a flower crown and a lacy, flowing gown (or flowing Grecian gown, holy cow!) and walk down the aisle bare foot to meet my barefoot husband-to-be who's only wearing rolled up khakis and a white button down shirt.

I want my guests to sit on borrowed carpets in the middle of a field and I want every woman who comes to my wedding to have a flower in her hair. I don't want a lot of guests.

 I want my bridesmaids to have long, flowing dresses in beautiful, pale colors. I want a magical tent for the reception (do you SEE that amazing lacy concoction down there?!). I want it to be strung with twinkle lights and every flat surface to have a candle on it. I want daisies and mismatched china and floating lanterns and Carnival glass.

I want my groom to play guitar for me and to have longish ruffled hair. I want simple, light appetizers and crisp, fruity wine. Or microbrewed beer! I want our favors to be little paper bags of seeds or succulents in teacups or homemade jars of jam.

It'll never happen, and I think I'm okay with that. But it sure is nice to daydream.  

Making Myself Marketable

The last month has been a pretty interesting mix of interviews, applications, and an existential crisis regarding how my skill set is most likely going to make me zombie chow in the event of a zombie-related apocalypse (in any other apocalypse, FYI, I'm just plain ol' dead).

I've also been working on making myself more marketable. For instance, I've been spending three days a week at the library as their social media marketing intern. When I haven't been applying for jobs or reading about the glories of Pinterest and Twitter marketing, I've been playing around with GIMP, an open source version of Photoshop. So far I've been editing some images of me to give to Kris so he can have sexy desktop pictures of me instead of some random half-naked girl.

Acceptable Wallpaper

Unacceptable Wallpaper

But today I ventured out of my comfort zone a little bit and made some typography attempts. I saw some cool posters with Seinfeld quotes selling for $30+ (check them out here) and decided that words on a background was something that I could probably do. I started playing around on GIMP and looking for cool free typefaces, which didn't happen this time. So, I stuck with my (old) GIMP-provide typeface and experimented.

Then I needed a quote and, because I'm kind of a lame-o, I've been working my way through Star Trek: Next Generation. Whilst watching, I heard this line and more or less fell in love with it. And I decided to make it: 

I then decided that the above image was a little blah, so I added a little graphic I found to the bottom to liven it up.

 I can't decide how I feel about the black background on the Star Trek emblem thing-y, but I'm leaving it for now. My next step would be to test out the FedEx printing poster-sized images for $5 idea that's been floating around Pinterest for a year.

There's a Wedding Dress in My Living Room...

The wedding got postponed about six months ago, approximately two months after I'd  half-bought a wedding dress I wasn't in love with (assume-ably to prove to myself that we were going to still get married in spite of the problems...).  I've been putting off finishing the payment and  picking it up since February, but if I didn't take care of it this week, the bridal boutique would get to keep it according to the contract I signed...

Why? Because we were going to get married on Saturday. And now we're not.

We decided to postpone the wedding for a lot of really, really good reasons and we put a lot of time and energy into the decision to postpone. I was happy, relieved, and re-energized when we decided to postpone, but now that the would-be-wedding-date is two days away...I don't know quite how I feel.

Part of my heart still wishes that there was wedding happening on Saturday. This is the part, I've just decided, that wishes our relationship was at a healthy enough place to be able to have wedding. It's definitely not, proving again that we made the right decision.

And I was certain of that when I went to pick the dress up today. Right up until the sales girl brought it out for me to see and I was reminded of how lovely it is (even if it's not my style at all). I caught myself thinking that I should just hang onto it in case we decided to run away to a beach somewhere and get married there (which would make that dress PERFECT)...And then I realized how dumb it was to think those things.

I got myself ice cream. I took an hour and half long bubble bath. I'm wearing my favorite clothes. I did my nails. I got a little facial in a bag and did that. I've listened to calming music, and then to my favorite Pandora station. Now I've written about it.

All that's left is for me to go downstairs and get the dress out of the box and take pictures and create an eBay account and a Tradesy account and who knows what other kinds of accounts and put an add in the paper and then try to sell the damn thing.

The thought terrifies me.

I'm so afraid that if I open that box, I'll want to put it on, and if I put it on...I don't know what I'll do.

Seeking Certifications

I've come to realize that however useful my English degree and Professional Writing minor might be, they aren't nearly as marketable as being Microsoft Word certified and Google certified.

The problem is, I just spent thousands of dollars on my education and these certifications  cost about $100+ a pop. This is awfully frustrating to me and I feel like I should be taking another semester of courses in order to be more marketable.

Well, that, and I'm beginning to realize more and more that the career I feel most comfortable with would have something to do with Library Science. Unfortunately, I came across this realization too late and the nearest ALA accredited university isn't accepting applications until next February. Which give me plenty of time to prepare my application materials, but makes it difficult for me to pursue a job in the meantime. I detest the idea of going back into food service or the like, but at the same time, perhaps I should until I am able to apply?

But even then, I need to be able to have a job whilst in a Master's program, don't I? Ideally, I'd love to be able to work in a library, but there are no positions available anywhere in my area. Not even in universities. The best option I've found so far is a Social Media internship for my county library system, which I have applied for, but not heard back from. I worry that if I even end up getting that position, it won't be paid since it's a city internship and I'll end up back in the position of looking for a position in the food industry.

Blerg.

Another option could be that I spend some time teaching myself some marketable skills and getting certified more effectively while working in the food service and then pursuing a career a couple months from now.  However, does that really solve my initial problem?  

It's Happening...

I'm getting the I've-got-too-much-time-on-my-hands-and-a-desire-to-remake-everything-itch. This happens to me every summer, for as long as I can remember...I get out of school, I have no homework and work is a minimal presence in my life and now I have the time to notice how boring just about everything in my life is.

I then proceed to make lists of projects I can do (or wish I could do, but can't since I don't have the money for it). These projects can be anything, from remaking my intellect by reading the hallmark literature of a particular decade to a total rehaul of my wardrobe (which can include going to Goodwill and buying hideously ugly dresses because I am convinced that I can make them beautiful with my pathetic sewing skills), to the painting a redecorating of my house or yard.

You'll notice that the last time I wrote on this blog was at the end of last summer...

It's wildly annoying to me, especially since I've discovered Pinterst, because I am really pretty terrible at projects. I have a terrible tendency to get really enthusiastic about them and then get bored with them when they get harder than I anticipated. Has that stopped me this time yet? Nope.

Since I've graduated, I have:

1. Started reading three different books about things like Proofreading, Social Media management, and Feminism...
2. Been to six different Goodwills in search of furniture to repaint and dresses to remake.
3. Found about twenty different home improvement projects I'd like to take on to improve my rental.
4. Rearranged my living room, kitchen, and bedroom.
5. Started blogging again.
6. And decided to rewrite two stories I wrote in high school and see if I can get them published as Harlequin romance novels.

And I've been sort of avoiding the idea that I might have to get a job soon. I've found a few jobs that I could probably apply to, but none of them are jobs that would really make me happy. So I'm restless and nervous and jobless...and what am I doing? Figuring out how to paint the tile in the kitchen.

Fresh Start

So, I've graduated college. I've moved myself to a city two and a half hours from where I've lived my entire life. My wedding's been postponed until next year.

I'm jobless and realizing that I can't just find a job as easily as I used to be able to. I have to figure out what I want to do with my life. I'm trying to start eating right, not just healthy, but good for my body and syncing my actions with my body's cycles.

Oh yeah, this is great fun.

I'm not complaining, really, I'm not. I love the idea of being able to start over and finally begin a life that's completely mine, right down to the food I eat.

But I'm scared too. I don't know what to do with myself now that I'm not going back to school in the fall. And what if I choose the wrong job? What if I end up stuck somewhere that makes me miserable? Worse yet, what if I don't get a job and I can't afford to live in this bright, shiny, new place and eat my bright, shiny, new food and plan the wedding that I wanted because I have no way to finance it?

It's problematic. It's kind of making me panic a little. I thought I'd be more prepared for this, but I'm really not. And I don't know what to do about it.