so long, sweet summer

i don't want to go back to school.

i've finished 6 years of post-secondary education. i'm tired of it. grad school the first time around was a joke. actually, it was worse than a joke. i spent a god awful amount of money on what felt like nothing -- nothing that really stuck in my head after april.

i guess i have every right to be tired of school and not have any motivation to get through another fucking year. i figured that maybe this summer -- the one where i couldn't land a job -- would be the summer that follows into september where i don't have to head back to school for something. i just want a job i can be content with and preferably isn't shitty, like working retail. 6 years of school should at least allow me to be able to function in my field of study. as long as i'm getting some moneys, i'll just get you coffee and watch your kids. whatever. i want the real world experience that i lack. i want the real world experience i was supposed to get during my internship in the second semester of grad school; except what i got was developing a 40 page research project that they threw out the moment we walked away. at least i can truly justify my anger.

i haven't had an interview since sometime in the beginning of july when i figured i had nailed that internship with the marketing place. i did nail it; it came down to me and two others. except somebody else got hired over me. still, it's nice to know that i was considered, i suppose. on friday, i had 2 interviews. one with tourism ontario and one with global village. i feel like the lady at tourism ontario was pretty impressed with me. the interview went on for quite awhile and it sounded like a lot of things i could do, given the right circumstances. the global village interview also went pretty well, i think. they didn't have anyone even remotely interested in environment-related things and figured they should probably start.

there's a recruitment/temp agency that's been calling me lately too, but every time i return the call, i never get who i'm supposed to talk to and it's a never-ending cycle of phone tag. she "just wants to talk about my resume"... whatever that means. i've applied to a couple of jobs through that agency but none of them were anything i was that crazy interested in doing. i have an interview with them on wednesday. i also sort of had an in with a retail store that i went to see today, but apparently showed up too late. they clearly saw me standing there quite confused and they didn't even bother to come over to the door and tell me what's up. whatever. i'm better off. i should have just slept through my alarm instead of getting up and trekking over there. i also wasted a bunch of my time applying for a ryerson job only to hear back instantly that applicants were preferred to be ryerson students. for the amount of things i do for both ryerson and u of t, i may as well be an enrolled student. fuck.

the good news is that i'm going to get some money this week. i signed up and was randomly selected to participate in a focus group with seneca. they give me some moneys that will cover a fair amount of food and beer for a couple of weeks. i'm stoked on that. remember that job i was hired at back in april? and then they told me may? and june? and july? and for canada day, they got in touch with me and asked if i was available to work -- but i wasn't. well, they contacted me again for this saturday. and this time, i'm free all day. so, here's hoping something happens with that.

so what am i doing with my time, then? well, applying to jobs takes up a good portion of my day. i've been doing volunteer work with u of t and i'm an official orientation leader of frosh week in september. my longboarding internship is still kicking around and i'm working on things for that. and i did go home to visit for about a week in august. i hadn't been home in a couple of months and had a  lot of stuff to do while i was home. last week, i also found out that my kitty's feline diabetes reversed and now he's back to being healthy. that was super exciting news, and i'm really happy about that.

such a baby.

yep... same old life, really. if i end up going back to school, i start on september 4. with an 8am. because seneca is terrible, amongst other things. but that won't stop me from trying to find a job.

it was the batman? no, it was actually me.

my interest in activism started when i was young. i was living a great life and i couldn't understand why everyone else was constantly complaining about things. i've always lived with a high standard of morality. and once i began intrigued with the world of social justice, equity, environmentalism, and ethics, i was hooked on all of these concepts. they fueled my desire to help others where i could and however i could -- because i always wanted what was the best choice (to each their own, of course) for everyone else.

and i guess you could say, that is what i did what i did last night.

i was on my way home from the bar and had decided to walk a fair hike for awhile to get some exercise, fresh air, clear my head, and just rock out to some tunes. a few streetcars passed me and i decided to hold off, at least for another few blocks. up ahead, i noticed what looked like a conflict going on between a dude and a girl. i was pretty far away, so i wasn't entirely sure if they were just lovingly hating each other or if something was about to go down.

when i got closer to them, i saw the dude forcefully throw the girl against a wall and really get in her face, yelling all kinds of profanity that i could hear from half a block away. i'm all for passion but this was just nonsense. i had three choices. i could have crossed the street and avoided the whole confrontation entirely. it wasn't my business to begin with. or, i could have walked past them and not said a word the entire time and continued on my way -- which seems to be a normal torontonian thing to do.

but instead, i walked up a few feet away from them and yelled. the dude reacted in the way i played it out in my head. he told me to keep on walking -- that what was going on didn't concern me. and again, i had a choice. i could keep on walking or i could do something. i told him straight up that what he was doing did concern me, as it concerned every girl on this planet. i told him she didn't look too happy with what was going on and that for the sake of his own good, he should probably stop what he's doing.

oh, this pissed him off. he walked up to me all tough and got inches away from my face, yelling and screaming at me to fuck off and so on. his breath smelled of beer. i didn't back down. i didn't flinch. i wasn't scared. i stared at him. i calmly told him that he was done here and that if he didn't leave her alone, things were not going to work out in his favour. i could see the look on his face change to a smirk. he didn't believe that i could do anything to stop him.

he went to grab my arm to push me away/down and i immediately went into self-defense mode.  this dude was much bigger than i am (but that doesn't take much). i quickly grabbed his wrist, turned it around backwards, and dug my nails into the underside of his wrist, right on the vein. it's a painful area if you do it the way i've been taught and has been a useful tactic when i've been in numerous dangerous situations. but i wouldn't have done it if he didn't try to lay a hand on me. i told him that this was enough and he was going to leave us as soon as i let go. he nodded in agreement while his face was clenched with pain. i let go and pushed him away from me in the opposite direction. he walked off holding his wrist and screaming profanities.

when it was over, the girl told me that he was a friend of a friend walking her home after the bar. they had just met. she didn't live too far away from the bar but he insisted on walking her home. she got about a block from her place when he kept asking her to come up to her place and spend the night. she wasn't interested. and then things got ugly. he told her that he had a knife and was going to hurt her. we called her friend and told her what had happened, but it turns out it wasn't actually her friend's friend, more of her friend's acquaintance. they too, had only met once or twice before. i walked the girl to her place and we notified the police to file a report.

a lot of my life has been about the "wrong place, wrong time" curse. i've been in many situations when i was younger, throughout my teens, that were seriously dangerous. but i've always handled them in a graceful matter. parties that get out of control, being chased down by a couple of dudes over a misunderstanding, being followed by strange men on numerous occasions, getting drugged and taken advantage of against my will, or even minding my own business and going shopping for an evening are just a handful of the scenarios i've encountered in my short little life. seeing the darker side of the towns and people i grew up with made me realize that as a strong woman, i was capable of doing and handling whatever situation that was thrown at me.

so, maybe batman wasn't around last night to help somebody in need. but at least i was.

what am i gonna do with all these decisions i made? i am stuck in them.

if you haven't watched this already, you probably should.

i've been making a lot of decisions lately and making an attempt to bring my life back on track. i don't have a tendency to get derailed too often -- but sometimes, it's inevitable.

i started this blog over a year ago to talk about how ridiculous it is to find a shitty summer job or a grown-up job in this economy and being a recent graduate with zero experience within my field of study. and, for the most part, that is what this blog still represents. because i had only found a few summer jobs that i was consistently in and out of for the summer of 2011, i went back to school hoping that in 8 months, the economy, the job search, a new city, and more knowledge & qualifications would help me land a real job for the first time. unfortunately, that didn't happen. and i'm still scratching my head as to why it didn't happen.

this blog evolved into different subtopics, like budgeting and a lack of funds to friends, school, and relationships. these aspects were never my intention to write about -- but they were always things that needed to be said at the time when they were written. i can make the case that all of those topics are inherently related. having a job or not having a job means i'd have to budget or not have any money. school helped me not have any money but increased my qualifications for getting a job, or so i'm being told. friends and relationships are an integral part of the job search as they keep me grounded and give me a place to share my thoughts about what's going on.

there were two conversations i had this week which have helped me progress forward with my life.

1. a conversation with my roommate

there's a reason why my roommate and i (aka, my best friend since grade 6) get along so well. he's about the only person i know who can change my emotional state of being with just one sentence. he's always there when i need him to be as he's watched me struggle with many different things over the course of the almost a year we've been living together. he has a habit of knowing what to say in order to help me move on from whatever i'm dealing with.

for instance, awhile back we were talking about dude problems. i can't remember exactly what we were saying, but eventually he told me that "i was hotter than him." before you're quick to judge on that sentence, his words actually got me thinking. so i took them to other friends -- and they all agreed. it was only after this point when i realized that i had been seeing someone who, although i found him extremely attractive, most other friends didn't -- and saw me as the hotter one. this brought me back to how i met your mother's idea of the reacher and the settler. and in this scenario, it was definitely true. he was the reacher and i was the settler.

this time, a new job opening was available at my roommate's work. we got to talking about the position requirements and my roommate told me that i shouldn't apply for it because it was a "serious" job. this sentence hit me hard. yes, i have never had a serious job -- but i have never really been looking for one until now, sort of. i've spent the majority of my life working shitty jobs and being extraordinary when i do them while rarely receiving any feedback or recognition. even through my mass amount of volunteer work while at brock (which, for one year, took up an insane amount of my time and i basically hated every minute of it); i thought i would get some sort of recognition for my hard work. but it never happened.

so much of my life has been determined by the "someone else over me" concept. in jobs, i'm given a chance to prove my worth and someone else is hired over me. in recognition for hard work, someone else is given that recognition. in relationships, there's always someone else he'd rather be with than me (with the new shocking twist that this could happen basically any fucking time in the course of a relationship) and, as depressing as that may sound, i'm used to it. which is likely the reason why it doesn't take me very long to get over things that happen to me. this takes me into the conversations of last night.

2. the conversations i had last night 

this blog and any king of writing in general (especially that of my not-so-public blog that exists out there) have always worked as a release for my anger, resentment, and occasional happy moments. i am by no means an angry girl. but there are some things out there that can get the best of me and can stay locked up in me for weeks, months or years, depending on the situation. yes, my friends are content to listen to my problems and some of them can tell when i've been having a rough time. but in all honesty, i would rather not bore my friends with what i'm dealing with and talk about more positive, happier things. because that's my personality and it's not going to change.

so, last night, my roommate and i had a few friends over for drinks. and although i didn't want to talk about what's been going on and how i'm feeling -- most of them got it out of drunk amber pretty easily. and once i started talking, i found myself not able to stop.

yes, dude problems fucking suck. but i only needed a day before i was back out there and doing what i want. i didn't have any anger or resentment about what happened. you could barely even call it a break-up since things weren't "official" or "serious". but it ended. and despite what people may think, i'm actually okay. i feel the need to mention how wonderful my friends have been when they found out about what's been going on with me -- i couldn't ask for more love and support.

reading this article on men vs women breakups got me thinking too about how i don't fit the woman "norm" for getting over things. but, i have to play it safe. i have to prolong interactions and there's a high percentage that i can never be just friends with that person. although i'm not sure if they will or ever do (because i've never tried), i worry that whatever feelings i had may return and i'll constantly want something more than just a friendship. there is one dude in my life that i had deep feelings for at one point and it was the only time it took me forever to get over our ending. but now that dude is one of my good friends -- and i'm happy for that.

so yes, it can happen. but sometimes, it's just better and easier when it doesn't.