To Fit Another September Post In...

...I will stop at nothing.
Today, I spent four hours looking up fountain pens on the internets. Yes. Not for any particular reason, just for shits. My how time flies when you're hopelessly bored. Slash, no.
Despite my earlier claim that school is my driving force, there are several reasons why it is not fulfilling my need for direction as of yet.

1. I have not bought the necessary texts because I have no fucking money.
2. I have no fucking money and therefore cannot buy the good food that would make me feel like I have any kind of energy at all.
3. I am a wee bit on the depressed side of lonely and bored, and I am therefore finding it hard to get motivated.
4. I have no fucking money, and this is the main preoccupation of my mind currently.

So instead, I use my internet connection for evil, not for good, and kill time watching sitcoms on tvlinks and looking up fountain pens.
God, they're so hot, some of them.
I read so many blogs today that epitomize what I am terrified of becoming.
Because you know what?
I hate to admit it...
but I'm a hobbyist/collector waiting to happen.
Up until this point, I've quelled my urge to obsess through smoking, both grass and tobacco, drinking, doing dangerous things with my body and my self, eating too much, having too much sex, and engaging in obsessive insecurity in relationships.
But now that I have cut most of the above out of my lifestyle, and now that I am also trying like hell not to return to them in any way, I find myself becoming the healthy nerd I was in public school. I collect facts about strange things, revel in the entirely uncool and bathe myself in habitual behaviour of the third kind.
That kind being the stationary, web-based variety.

Here is what I would rather be doing with this energy.

1. Working out
2. Learning how to cook for myself
3. Doing my fucking laundry
4. Obsessively reading and writing
5. Meeting new and interesting people
6. Talking to people at coffee shops about their random experiences
7. Learning more sweet guitar riffs
8. Teaching my guinea pig tricks
9. Drinking more water
10. Holding fortnightly fancy soirees
11. Listening to new music
12. Learning how to play the harmonica
13. Styling my hair
14. Plucking my goddamn eyebrows with a vengeance

Now. This is not to say that I am not doing some of the above things. Numbers 6, 9, and 14 are happening on occasion. And I did build my G.P. a sweet little house with an awning and everything out of carboard the other day. And number 7 can now begin thanks to the kindness of a one Ms. L.P., who loaned me her daughter's underused fender acoustic.
Some of these things cannot happen however. Because items 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 13 (now that I've run out of the last of my hair products) require money. Which I don't fucking have. The others that I have yet to start are due to my complete lack of motivation. NOT that there's an excuse for that, but whatever.
So here I am, having retained nothing un-nerdy to say thanks to a day spent washing my eyeballs in electronic glow. And dammit, I'm going to post this miserable piece of work, because if nothing else, I will consider it an accomplishment among few for this lame September month. Fuck. Almost as bad as that Green Day song that makes me want to pluck my eardrums out with barbecue tongs.
I digress.

SCHOOL!

holy balls, no joke. it begins in two days and life will once again have meaning and direction.
being someone who can't just let things be, i always take this time to wonder and worry about what it will be like after all of this meaning and significance is over. what will drive us each to wake up every morning, to read books that would otherwise be balancing crooked cafe tables and/or holding doors open, to write words that seem to come from some unknown place between our wrists and our spinal column but certainly not often our brain, to argue and debate and push for things we are not yet sure we believe in? will all the questions we have now (what is the meaning of life? do i believe in the political structure we have or...can i imagine something better? is it wrong to eat pizza for breakfast? am i cute? should i really be trying to succeed and thereby buying into the capitalist regime/university accreditation process that jane jacobs says will create a new dark age? does god really hate me because i like women's naked bodies? is it okay to call them back five minutes after i leave? where did that fucking hamster go? can i get another extension if i cry at office hours? is s/he really as dumb as s/he's acting? am i only pretending to be intelligent? is anyone really fooled? i wonder if this would make sense on drugs? what on earth does "the sampling distribution of means" mean? minute rice or basmati? will i have enough OSAP left over to get a new tattoo?) suddenly evaporate upon graduation? sadly, i feel nearly completely certain that things will remain largely the same. but here's the thing, the one solitary difference, between university and the rest of your life.
university is for you. you may claim that you are educating yourself to better save the world, but that's bollocks. it is the one thing you will do with vast quantities of your/the government's/your parents' money. you may never again spend that much money completely on yourself. firstly. secondly, everything you do in school adds to you as a person. whatever you learn, however high your marks are - these are benefits and bragging rights that go directly to you. do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
after university, no matter what you studied, what field you are going into, who you end up working for... for the most part, after university, you will be doing things for other people. either because you are in an entry-level position, because you studied teaching or development or social work and that's your job, or because your boss is an asshole. all of a sudden, all the same worries are there (am i good enough, interesting enough, smart enough, hot enough? do i have enough money for rent, groceries, bills, tattoos? will i die alone?), but you're out in the world working under someone or another to earn money. and that money disappears. partly to pay your osap, partly to pay living expenses, partly on fun things that are indeed for your own enjoyment. but it disappears. your life is not your own anymore. reading becomes some recreational privilege because you don't have time for it, and frankly, you start to feel like you don't have the right. going out to get drunk isn't some social brewhaha that makes you feel good - it becomes something you do at the end of a work week because you have to stop thinking about the odious cycle you've gotten yourself into. if you're lucky, you will have ended up in a situation that you chose - you're teacher and you really feel connected to helping those students, or you're a social worker and you feel like you're helping to build good community, or you're a science major and you feel on the brink of solving problems for the whole world, or you're a writer and you feel like maybe soon you'll be able to move people to tears, or convince them to recycle. if your work was what you wanted all along, it still feels like it's for you. but trust me, the number of people fresh out of undergraduate degrees who get work that they wanted all along, let alone knowing what the fuck that might entail, is slim to nil. and i think it's just healthy to face that fact now and move on.
once i finish thinking and worrying these things, the fact that school is my driving force doesn't worry me so much. i stop aching for meaning and start reveling in the simplistic beauty of education for education's sake.
so my message today is, despite their ridiculous prices, stop and smell the textbooks. they may very well be the last thing you do just for you.