l i l e p h y t e


September 15th, 19:38 | Lately there's been too much of this -- but don't think it's too late...

I have a small cut on my wrist where I accidentally stabbed myself on a knife in the dishwasher. It's about three mm long and follows one of the veins. It looks strange to me, this small sliver of red, above skin puffy with trying to staunch bloodflow. Just... strange.

I'm in a bad mood. I was in a pretty good mood all day (a remarkable feat considering the soul-drainingly boring training I'm enduring at Workplace these days) up until I sat down at dinner and, for once in my life, tried to ask my parents for advice. Grrr. Get back to that one in a moment. Still too annoyed.

Things with the Boy are... slow. Hesitant. A weird balance of goodwill on both sides, and bad results from both ends. We're trying. We talk. We hurt. We wonder how the hell we were able, four months ago, to actually talk to each other and get our points across. Or at least I think we do, I know I do. Well I'd hoped that since we're here anyway, that we could end up saying things we'd always needed to say...

I've been listening to Nickelback lately. I don't really know why. I mean, I realize that all their songs sound the same and that The Song That They All Sound Like isn't even all that good, but there's just a quality that's there that really works with the way I feel lately. (Translation: lilephyte has apparently morphed into an angsty 12-year-old who likes having her angst expressed by gravelly-toned guys with bad hair and little creativity in song format. Hmm.) I mean it though. There's an emotion I'm trying to put words around, and some of their lyrics make it glow raw. The tune for lately? Someday.

So why exactly was I in a good mood up until dinner? For all I'll rant about how boring training is, and how useless most of it is for me since anything I didn't already know how to do I can't do anyway, due to lack of IDs and suchlike (HR to lilephyte : You don't exist. We're sorry. Get over it.) I have to say that I'm glad I'm going over the ideas of career planning and goal-setting and all that other personal achievement stuff that Workplace is so big on. (Note to self: this means you have to start, you know, talking to your manager and not being scared of him. Get on it!)

Why is this a big deal, you ask? Because I am extremely slow on the uptake. You see, I always kind of figured that one day I'd have a job and all that sort of thing, but I never really thought about the transition from Student through Person Building Her Career to Person With A Job Who Worries About Mortgages And Kids And Shit. That whole "person building their career" step totally escaped me; I always just figured I'd somehow morph from Student into Real World Person. Add to this my inherent inability to let go of anything. People, old notes, books, scrap fabric, anything. Naturally then, it would be impossible for me to make any important decisions because, inevitably, whenever you make one, although you may open a million doors for yourself, you're closing at least one as well. And that just one do for Miss lilephyte, girl who hates letting go of anything, or letting any possibility slip by.

This all falls apart, however, with the very obvious realization that not choosing anything is far worse than picking one thing, and maybe later changing your mind. By not having made a decision ever (look at my degree for chrissakes -- biochem or computer science? why not both?!) I've probably passed up on more chances than I care to think about. But having finally figured out that I'm never going to get anywhere unless I at least pick somewhere to start with, it occurs to me that I can't hold out for "some school. you know, pharm, eds, whatever" because that's just bullshit. If I want to go for pharmacy, then fine. There's a set list of things I can do to prepare for that. Similarly, if I'm aiming for teaching, there's things I can do for that too. But the two lists aren't the same. And finally, the time has come for me to make a decision. To *gasp!* actually take my life into my own hands, like I've been saying I should for five years now.

Having said that, I'd been thinking these days that I'm leaning more towards teaching. I'm figuring that the first-year bio might not be a bad idea even though I don't need it, just because I might want to do a second B.Sc in biology or something and this is a good start but... after the extremely discouraging discussion with the parents, I'm now once again wondering if pharmacy might be a better goal. And I've decided that I can't make that decision because I don't really know what it'd be like. In the end, I figure, I won't close that door. I'll take my class, I'll shadow some pharmacists sometime, I'll apply next summer. But my volunteering (that's right folks, lilephyte doesn't have enough on her plate as it is!) is going to be teaching-oriented, as is my development within Workplace, and if I get sick of it all, fuck it, I'll take off for 6 months for a year or whatever and teach English in Asia somewhere.

It's not much of a plan, but at least it's a start. Now... how do I tell my manager that if all goes well I won't be with the company for more than 3 years at most?


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