So What ARE You Doing Now?

It's a fair question. Here, I'll do a little Q&A with you.

What are you doing now?
To make money, I'm waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant. Believe it or not, I don't hate it. Does it provide me an extreme sense of fulfillment? Hah. No. But I like the people I work with, I like the food, I'm bringing home cold hard cash, and I don't mind going to work every day. So that's good enough for now.

Outside of work, I spend part of my time doing some volunteer envelope-stuffing and phone-a-thon calling at my high school, another portion of my time keeping up with stay-in-touch phone calls and emails to friends spread all across the country, and the rest of my time slowly trudging through a to-do list that constantly says "write more, blog more, and cough up the money to join the gym."

Soooo...why Louisville?
I have love love love love LOVED all the hopping and bopping around I've done since graduation. Seriously. LOVED every second of it. But, to be honest, the feeling of "just scraping by" financially has left me a little bit exhausted. As Guatemala neared an end, I wasn't quite sure I had the energy to enter another adventure dead broke.

In Louisville, I'm lucky enough to be living rent-free with the 'rents for now, so even though I still feel broke ("Bills, Bills, Bills" appears to have been my welcome-back to-the-USA theme song), I know I'm saving big.

Plus, I've also been lucky enough to have stayed in touch with a lot of my high school friends. Granted, they all have their own lives here now, but since my return they have been nothing but generous in inviting me to jump right into those lives.

But you're looking for a real job, right?
Sort of, but not really. That's the truth.

I am keeping my eyes open for communications/publishing jobs in Louisville. So far, nothing I'd love has come up. And that's actually fine, because I've never had plans to stay in Louisville. If something comes up, I'll obviously pursue it. But no, I'm not very concerned with finding the dream job in a city I know I want to leave. And I don't think that makes me crazy.

I'm also keeping my eyes and ears open for great jobs in other cities. I've found plenty of those already, but I'm just still too broke for any major moves right now. Just gimme a sec. :)

But then why don't you just take any old real job in Louisville -- even if you hate it? At least you'd make more money faster, right?
Probably. But there are already a lot of depressing things about my current life situation. Please don't make me add Job I Loathe to that list. And for what? A line on my resume that I'll just delete anyway when I apply for future jobs because of its total and utter irrelevance?

So, you really don't think you're crazy?
My parents think I am insane, my peers probably think I have turned super lazy, and my all-too-nice friend Nick makes me sound much cooler by describing me as doing the "starving artist" thing. I appreciate that, haha.

I guess I'm just shooting for "realistic, with minimal settling-for-things-I-hate just in order to say I'm doing the 9-5."

So who knows. Maybe that makes me crazy. But that's the life update!