For those of you who have wondered why I'm wasting my college education at Starbucks, there are three reasons why.
1. I haven't really figured out what I want to do with my life. The jobs I want (ropes course facilitator) aren't practical and won't pay me anything, and the jobs I'm qualified for that would pay me properly seem to be either tedious desk jobs or jobs that would require me to be aggressively outgoing a lot of the time. Neither appeals to me.
2. I really don't want to put myself through the whole time-sucking, emotionally destructive, endlessly frustrating process of resume-honing, applying, and being rejected from multiple jobs before I get hired on to a job I don't even know if I'll like.
3. It's really my last chance in life to be so completely irresponsible. It's like Diablo Cody says in this quote from her book, Candy Girl:
"I had spent my entire life choking on normalcy, decency, and Jif sandwiches with the crusts amputated. For me, stripping was an unusual kind of escape. I had nothing to escape from but privilege, but I claimed asylum anyway. At twenty-four, it was my last chance to reject something and become nothing. I wanted to terrify myself. Mission accomplished."
I always thought it would be neat to work at a coffeeshop, but bad timing and other opportunities conspired so that I never got a chance to do it while in college, which is the normal time for it. So, sort of like the last fling before deciding to get into a serious relationship, I determined I was going to work at Starbucks before signing on for a responsible "serious" job. The fact that I was having no luck whatsoever finding a good serious job was a contributing factor, but no doubt I could have found a respectable office job if I'd pursued it as singlemindedly as I pursued Starbucks.
I have had a lot of fun working at Starbucks, but it's not fulfilling, and it's not where I want to be long-term. I'd been saying that all along, but in the beginning it was mostly to pacify my mother and high school English teacher, to reassure them I wasn't throwing my life away, only putting it on hold. Now I'm finding it's true. The only catch is that I can't figure what I want to do instead. I'm in a bit of a catch-22: by my nature I don't do well at sitting still for long periods of time; I need variety in my day, so a desk job is not a good choice. But I am an incontrovertible introvert, and find interacting with the public incredibly taxing. I like to move around a lot, but my bad knee flares up whenever I've been standing for too long. So I can't imagine what type of job can fit all these criteria.
So, yeah....I'm not dead. Although, if I was dead, I could just get an injection of a serum made of Clark Kent's blood, and I'd be fine. At least until I started bleeding from the eyes.
I've been watching a lot of Smallville lately. Perhaps an unhealthy amount. No spoilers, please, I'm only in season three. Whenever I stumble across Smallville on ABC Family (and it's on there like all the time) I have to close my eyes and sing "lalalala" loudly until I can manage to mute and change the channel. Yes, I am twelve years old.
Speaking of twelve years old, today at work a bunch of us ended up singing Spice Girls songs in the tiny drive-thru workspace. It was awesome.
