Crazy

It seems like a while since I've come here. Why? Because these days, I spend the majority of my time grinning like a fool and listening to music that I can't relate to.

Example: last night, I was driving across town with the last of the Arizona sun warming my face, smiling the smile of the hopelessly happy and listening to old R&B on the AM radio. I'm basically a one-woman cliche.

I haven't really wanted to write about it because I'm afraid of jinxing it. I haven't felt good about myself or my life in a while and I don't want to scare away the good fortune. The beginning of the year was rocky for a variety of reasons. My demons came back for me and for the first time in a long time I didn't see a way out. I thought it over plenty of times and was just beginning to accept the fact that I was meant to be unhinged when something happened. I can't quite pinpoint what changed or how I got out of it, but I noticed one day that my head was a little clearer. Yes, the static and depression and overwhelming urge to obsess and control were still there, but the ideas that scared me so badly were now just speaking to me instead of shouting.

A while later, I realized that I wasn't so concerned about how I was going to make it through the day. Before, I had to have a firm plan of what I was going to do during the day, down the hour, because having free time to be alone with my thoughts was too risky. Suddenly, I had the free time that I dreaded so much and, very surprisingly, I wasn't afraid of it. I started to embrace it and it felt familiar. I realized I missed having time to myself.

These days, I can't quite remember what it the first four months of the year felt like. I remember what I was doing and saying and how damaging both tended to be to me, but I can't identify with the feelings anymore. It's like my brain re-arranged itself one night and I woke up feeling new. I went to work and my eyes weren't glazed over. I started caring about myself and things I deemed important. Funny thing is, after I started to realize that I wasn't crazy, things just started to fall into place. I'm two years away from being a college graduate, my relationships with my friends and family have proven to be stronger than I ever expected, I met The Boy and, while I'm still some way from my weight-loss goal, I am absolutely confident that I will make it to where I want to be.

Like I said, I don't know what changed. I still have moments where I don't know if I'm allowed to be this happy. It doesn't feel real a lot of the time, but instead of spending a lot of time questioning or analyzing it, I'm just accepting it. Every single thought that kept me crippled during the beginning of the year is still there; I don't think those will ever go away. But they're quieter now and don't interfere as much. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I've beaten it. I don't need a label, especially that label, to define who I am and what I think about.

This isn't at all what I intended to write about, but I guess it just needed to come out. Funny how that works.

I now know Ben Harper makes me sleepy.

Have you ever had so much on your plate that none of it really seems real? I have a million things to accomplish, but it's so much that my brain has reacted by skipping past stressed and overwhelmed to just a weird sort of calm. Like the eye of the storm; you know that there's still an entire fucking hurricane to get through, and you have no reason to be but you're just incredibly calm about the whole thing. I tend to panic in this sort of situation. My thought process generally goes a little something like this:

Step 1: What do I need to accomplish today?
Step 2: What can I do to accomplish that?
Step 3: Holy shit, that's a lot to do.
Step 4: Well, I guess if I plow through I can get the majority of it done.
Step 5: Oh shit, tonight is [insert social/family engagement that you already committed to].
Step 6: I'll just have to cancel.
Step 7: Oh my god, I forgot about that extra report due tomorrow.
Step 8: THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME IN THE DAY TO GET EVERYTHING DONE!
Step 9: Okay, okay, calm down.
Step 10: Nap

Uh, yeah. It's been busy, I guess is the point of this post. Actually, there really is no point I was hoping to get out of this. I was just kinda tired of looking at that last post. But, to make up for being lame, here is an ELEVEN MINUTE VIDEO of a song that I just can't get enough of. Yes, the song is awesome. No, I don't know what the heck the video is about. And you're probably nowhere near high enough to understand what's going on. That being said, enjoy!



Jeeeeeeeeez, did you watch the entire thing? Don't you have work to do?

I'm still not making any coffee, though.

A couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with M about our jobs.

"I just want to do something that I like. I don't even have to love it, but I'd like to wake up and go to a job where I'm doing something that I care about," I said.

Without missing a beat, M said, "I want to make money. I want to make enough money to be able to do whatever the hell I want."

Today, as I was sitting in on a meeting that had little to do with me, I couldn't help but remember the conversation M and I had weeks earlier. I felt bad. The woman leading the meeting flew in from out of town. She was looking to talk to someone about records and, for reasons unbeknownst to yours truly, I was the best representative. I listened, nodded, made the appropriate comments at the appropriate time and generally did my best to look like I belonged there.

The woman studied my face as I spoke. She watched me so intently, I started to think she could see right through me. I focused on her eyes and silently dared her to read between the lines.

"I don't know what I'm talking about," was the underlying statement.

"I don't care about any of this," was a close second.

"I'm just biding my time here until I get transferred to the department I really want to work for," came in third.

Then, as I was in the middle of rattling off something not even I understood, it hit me: I need to grow up.

I have this thing in life where I just expect everything to work out on the first try. I expect to love the first job I have. I expected to get into my first choice college and have it all figured out by the time I walked in the door. I expected to graduate in 4 years and have a job lined up doing something that both pays well and is emotionally fulfilling.

Um, no.

None of that happened. And, much as I regret some things, I'm kind of glad it worked out this way. I'm starting to realize that only on the rarest of rare occasions will life go according to plan. It doesn't make it less painful or frustrating, but at least life is kind enough to be consistently cruel. For now, I'm struggling to figure out what kind of job I want and if it's possible, or even relevant, to have it be something that satisfies me emotionally.

"Just do something that makes you money. It doesn't have to be something you love, just something you can stand. Once you have the money, do the thing you love," M said it to me and it just clicked. It made sense and I was a little amazed that I hadn't thought of it before.

M's voice filled my head as I spoke to the woman who was leading the meeting.

"Sure, I can look into that for you," I said.

Her eyes bore into me and I thought, "I can do that, but not because I care. There are fewer things in the world I care less about. I can look into that for you because it will eventually lead me to the road I want to be on. I can sacrifice some of my interest and happiness because I know that someday, it will be repaid to me in full. I can look into that for you because I am putting faith in myself that I will follow through and become the person I want to be. Most of all, I can look into that because I have the knowledge, talent and ability to."

The meeting let out and I walked back to my desk. The ever-present urge to drop everything and walk out the door was still there, strong as ever. This time, though, instead of trying to repress it, I welcomed it. I allowed the feeling to make itself at home, hoping that it would never leave me. Praying that it will remind me that while I may not know what I want to do, I sure as hell know what I don't want to do.

I took a deep breath, sat down and got back to work.

There's no time, there's NEVER ANY TIME!

Holy crap, it's already May. Who saw that coming?! I'll tell you who didn't: me, because I'm not a calendar.

May means a lot of things. It's that magical time of year where the nice spring days start to turn into ice-cream melting hell. It's the time when all the dust you kicked out of your house during spring cleaning comes back and is all, "What up bitches? You miss me?". It's also the time of year that I hate the most: finals.

Yes, finals. The only time of year where I actually attend all my classes and pull what I hear are called "all-nighters". It's rare for me to stay up past 11, so staying up till the un-godly hours of the early morn' without alcohol to keep me company is, well, lame. I don't want to study during the day when I'm at my best (except between the hours of 1 and 3 because that's nap time), so why would I want to abandon my bed for arithmatic equations and rock formations?

So, until next Thursday when my last final is over, I'm going to be everywhere but here. Putting in an effort takes a lot of work and there just isn't enough time in the day to give 100% to everything.

But I promise, in the grand scheme of things, this blog is more enjoyable to me than school. Like, waaaaaay more enjoyable.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to the stack of textbooks on the table. Those books aren't going to fall asleep on themselves.

We'll be back after this commercial break.

It's been an intense few days. There have been many things happening, many of which I'm choosing not to write about. It's not that I'm not comfortable sharing with everyone (what's a blog for, after all), it's that I think it might be somewhat disrespectful to the parties involved. So, there's that.

Because of the mysterious and vague aforementioned things, I'm way behind on school work and actual work. Turns out when something bad happens, you can't just ignore work and hopes it goes away. It piles up. PEOPLE DON'T DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU. I know, ridiculous.

So, because I actually have to be an adult for awhile, I'm taking a few more days off from blogging. But, on the plus side, I imported all the posts from my old blog, Second to a Sitcom. So if you're bored and need your daily (or twice daily. Don't be ashamed.) KV fix, check the archives. I haven't had time to clean things up or make it look like one, cohesive blog instead of two sister-blogs. Eh, I'll get to it.

Until next time.

Optimistic

This is the week.

The week where I can effectively leave everything and everyone behind to clear my head for a few days. The week where I can ignore all the bad things in my life in favor of good, once in a lifetime opportunities.

This is the week where all the insecurities about school and my job won't matter as much. I won't have to worry about if I'm good enough, smart enough, funny enough or worthy enough. I won't care about any of that this week because there are bigger, more important issues at hand.

This is the week where I won't analyze and worry about my relationships with people. I won't let tears slide on long drives home because I feel so empty. I won't be terrified of meeting new people and even more scared that I won't be able to keep new relationships going. I won't have to think about how surprisingly numbing it is to fall out of love with someone. I won't have to lay awake at night and wonder if it's worth it to wake up tomorrow.

This week, I am pushing that all aside. This week I am making the best out of what I have, even if it's not ideal, because I want to.

Someone said to me the other day that it was time to get in the game. This week, that advice makes perfect sense. I'm getting in the game.

This week, I gotta win one.

God, I love crab puffs.

Well, there's good news and bad news.

Bad news: I'm still a zombie. I partied like a middle-aged woman last night. Ate a bunch of Chinese food, unbuttoned my pants to make room for the food baby and watched Millionaire Matchmaker until 1 in the morning.

Party on, Wayne.

Good news: It's Good Friday. Which means that some of you assholes got the day off. You know who didn't get the day off?

This moi.*

Instead, I got to go play in the desert for five hours. Oh, and did I mention I got to use a sweet, super awesome, fancy pants camera? I didn't mention that? Well then I guess I also may have forgotten to mention that I didn't know how to do anything other than point and shoot. It took me ten minutes to figure out the flash.

I am available to do weddings, people.

That being said, Happy Easter everyone. Now go do something crazy in the name of Jesus. Amen.

*If you're wondering when I'm going to stop talking about 30 Rock, the answer is NEVER. Never, that is, unless I find out Tina Fey eats babies or I get distracted by a new show. Your move, network TV.

Because majoring in lightning rounds wasn't possible.

I'm KV and I'm majoring in something kind of ridiculous: history.

I should clarify by saying that I don't think it's ridiculous. History has always been a fascinating subject to me. Maybe it's because I always read it like a movie script. Hold the phone, the Aztecs thought Cortes was the god Quetzalcoatl? And he didn't even correct them but instead used their beliefs against them, formed alliances with other native tribes and decimated their empire? This stuff practically writes itself.

However, I'm a firm believer that you can't invest in a future if you don't know your past. History got a lot of things wrong, but it also got a lot of things right. I like knowing where I came from.

The problem with majoring in history is there's no definite job you can do after you graduate. If you're majoring in pre-med, for example, you go on to medical school and eventually become a doctor. Elementary Education majors go on to teach, political science majors go on to be lawyers or judges and philosophy majors go on to do a lot of drugs and read a lot of Hunter S. Thompson. It's just the way the world works.

The majority of history majors go on to teach it. I don't really want to do that. I've spent the last sixteen years in school and the last thing I want to do when I graduate is go back and teach punk-ass kids like myself. I don't care how many blazers with sewn in leather elbow pads I get to wear or how many wine and brie socials are included. No Dead Poets Society in this corner, thank you very much.

To be honest, I don't really know what I want to do after college. And for now I'm cool with that. Maybe it's because I'm naive, apathetic or just blindly buying into the "whatever is meant to happen will" philosophy, but I'm not really worried about it.

What does worry me, however, is the judgement I get from people when this exchange happens:

Stranger: Are you still going to school?
KV: Yeah.
Stranger: What are you majoring in?
KV: History.
Stranger: How neat! Are you planning to teach it?
KV: Not really. Teaching doesn't really interest me.
Stranger:...Well, good luck.

That's neat? Good luck? What the fuck does that mean? Just because I'm not majoring in saving the world or business economics doesn't mean that I'm going to graduate, live in an old refrigerator box beneath the underpass and fight bums for food.

I once had a co-worker tell me that majoring in history was "whimsical". It's not like I'm studying fairy dust or elves; it's history. Past civilizations, cultures and people are not whimsical. The people of yesteryear (actual year between the 3rd and 4th centuries) would rise from the grave and curse the holy hell out of this place if they heard that.

I don't know why having other people judge what I'm studying irks me. Maybe it's because I sometimes feel selfish studying something like history. It's completely self-indulgent, but nothing else interests me as much as it does. So screw it if I don't have a job planned out where I can use it, if I'm going to be paying 20 grand a year for college, it's going to be in a subject that I like.

I figure worse comes to worse, I can make a living traveling the world with a band of gypsies. Or befriend the philosophy students, read a bunch of Kafka and smoke a lot of weed. Win!

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

I've been a bit lost as of late. But unlike the TV show, there's no Matthew Fox or guy who plays Sayid to save me with sexy glances or explain to me what the eff is going on with all this time travel debauchery (seriously Richard Alpert, you have to be at least 100).

No, when I say lost I mean I am completely and totally unsure what I'm doing with my life. I mean sure, I'm going to school, I work, I have a social life, but what's the point of it all? Why am I doing it and why does it all feel so unrewarding? The biggest question of all, though, is how do I come back from this? How do I get found again?

Answer: beats me. I don't know and I get the feeling that I'll never know. Some days I'm okay with that and other days it terrifies me so much that I feel like curling into myself and disappearing. On the latter sort of days, I usually end up spending all day staring off into space with a nice, solid glaze over my eyes. The type of look that makes people think, "Is she thinking really hard about something or is she just high?" Hint: sadly it's not the high one.

Fortunately, I have some friends and family who are nice enough to listen to the ramblings of a confused little girl. I get some good advice from them.

"It's alright to just go through the motions sometimes."
"Your job doesn't define you."
"You're 21. You're not going to have it all figured out now and you shouldn't expect to."
"Why are you giving all your power over to someone? You're better than that."
"Don't wear white shorts with red underwear."

I usually feel better after talking to whoever drew the short straw and had to listen my complaints. Sometimes, however, advice comes to me from a somewhat unlikely source: Rex Grayskull, iPod extraordinaire. I knew if I paid $300 for an iPod it would give me life advice. Win.

I was driving into work this morning, still a little upset from my recent vacation to the dark side and trying to remember if I had any gum in my purse (answer: no). Rex was going through his morning shuffle when "I Want To Break Free" by Queen came on. One of the things I've been trying to sort through is my dependency on others. I like my friends and family, but there are times when I think I have to be a (wo)man about things and handle my business without all the fuss. Freddy Mercury seems to have discovered that several years before I was born.


This looks like a dude who knows his shit.

After the song was done, I felt a little better.

I can handle this, I thought. Next up was the song "Piece of My Heart" by Janis Joplin. I've been a casual Janis fan and can't listen to her without the overwhelming urge to get shitfaced, wear flowers and punch someone int he name of women everywhere. Peace and love my ass. But this morning I almost did a fist pump in the air when she screamed/sang (scranged? seamed?) the part that went, "take it!" Fuck. Yes. My heart is indeed a little battered and kind of split and broken in a few places. And the majority of the time it hurts like a mother (not literally. Nobody worry, I'm not going into cardiac arrest, unless by "arrest" you mean "nap time"), but life isn't all puppies and rainbows or rainbows made of puppies. It blows a lot of the time. And cheesy as it is, it's enormously gratifying to get through the hard times and feel like I've one upped life just by manning up and getting through it. In your face, Life. Ball's in your court assface.

Janis and Freddy gave me some good advice this morning. I walked into work feeling better. Today, I will conquer my little corner of the world. Tomorrow I might be back to being mopey and terrified, but today, well today I'm going to win because I have to. Because today there's really no other way to live than by saying, "Fuck it, I'm going for it."

I Want It All, I Just Can't Figure Out Nothing

I've been having a hard time as of late. I can't figure out what I want to do with my life and everything I've done thus far seems, well, bleh. Quarter-life crisis come early is what's happening. At least I think so because I'm too lazy to look up what defines a quarter-life crisis on Wikipedia.

It's not that I don't have direction. It's that there's too many directions I want to go in. I want to study history, but I also want to learn how to be an archaeologist. I want to study anthropology, paleontology, Spanish, Mexican-American and European studies. I want to learn web design. I want to improve my writing skills. I want to be a screen writer, an editor, a director, or at least an extra in a zombie movie.


Dream big!

The problem is that I can't choose. I've tried and I just can't. I decide to go with one major and it's fine for a semester or so and then suddenly every fiber in my being is like, "History is for pricks and dead white guys. Let's be a movie director now!"

Aaaaaaand that's how you spend almost four years in college and still accomplish nothing academically. It's really quite a talent. I could write a book.

So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to build a resume right here on this blog. And by "resume" I mean "a list of things I am awesome blossom at". I'm talkin' awesome blossom with EXTRA awesome. Eat that.

1. Yelling/Shouting/Being Loud In General
Seriously, if there was a medal for being the loud, I would win it. I'd win it so many times, that they would eventually just end up naming the award the KV Award For Outstanding Decibel Achievement.

2. Watching things


Like this except with less robots. That is, unless has a spare robot.

If you need someone to watch a movie for you and then make comments about it, I'm your lady. Marathoning TV on DVD is one of my favorite things to do. I once even spent an entire Saturday watching Lifetime movies and westerns. Point being, if you need things watched, I'm pretty amazing at it. I don't discriminate between good or bad movies, entertaining or boring ones. Which leads me to #3...

3. Napping
I can nap anywhere. ANYWHERE. When I was little, my mom used to pay people to find me because I was such a stealth napper. If you need someone to be unconscious for 1-2 hours at any point in the day, then look no further. No longer than 2 hours though. Any nap that's longer than 2 hours is a sleep. Although I'm pretty good at that too.

4. Drinking
My drinking comes complete with dancing on platforms at clubs, hitting people in the eye with my elbows, drunk dialing, speaking every word of Spanish that I've ever heard and an enormous increase of Skill #1. However, it also comes with the spins, occasional vomiting and multiple declarations of "Seriously, seriously, you guys, no, shut up seriously I'm trying to say something here, I love you."

5. Time wasting
Pretty self-explanatory.

Paradise City: Where the Grass Is Green and The Girls Are Pretty

You'll be happy to know that today I was an active, productive adult. I only thought about ditching class for half an hour before actually driving myself over to campus. Which, as it turns out, was the right choice. If I had ditched like I originally wanted to, I would've missed the most awesome video about lava. That's right, I'm paying hundreds of dollars to watch a video about magma flow. Someone pinch me cause I must be dreaming.

After class I went to the gym. Run, run, run, sweat, sweat, sweat, you know how it goes.

On the drive home, I was feeling good. I did all the things I was supposed to do for the day and I was free to do what I had been wanting to do all day: unbutton my pants, take a nap and drink Diet Cokes. I really don't see how I don't go on more dates.

Rex Grayskull, my new iPod and love of my life (seriously, how am I not on a date right now as we speak?), must've been in a good mood too because he was pumping out the jams. Sweet Child Of Mine by Guns n' Roses came on. I was rockin'. Honestly, I think some people may have confused me for Axl Rose I was so good.


Pictured above: not me.

I was stopped at the light and was just getting ready for my air guitar solo, when I looked over and saw the guy in the car next to me giving me a look. It wasn't just a glance either, it was a glare. Nay, a smolder. I was being smoldered at.

At first I was a little taken aback. Then I thought about it. Here I am, rocking out so hard I was starting to fear for my car's safety. Of course this guy is checking me out! I thought. I must look like the coolest person on the planet right now.

Then I glanced in my rear view mirror to check out the situation this guy was seeing.



Woooooof. While in my mind I looked and felt like a rock star, I looked like I just escaped from an Elvis Presley impersonation festival. For crazies. During a hurricane.

The guy smirked at me and continued on his way. As for me, I did the only thing I could think to do to soften the embarrassment I felt: I put on Welcome to the Jungle and turned it on full blast. At the very least, I felt like I looked like the type of person who should be listening to Guns N' Roses.

Axl would be proud.