I'm Back!

I’m back! Finally. In the weeks I’ve been gone (from this blog, not from life in general), I’ve learned some important things about my character. For instance, the side-effects of being done school include an aversion to cell phones and a sudden determination to run a marathon but also eat cake every day.

And so it is that I find myself finished my degree, working part time, with so much free time on my hands that my body has gone into shock. I’m coping with the extreme amounts of free time by applying for jobs that DON’T involve excessive amounts of icing sugar, sending disturbing short stories to Mennonite literary journals, and improving my character by learning how to weld, reading motorcycle manuals, and teaching myself bass again*. That's right. I'm utilizing my free time to become a bad-ass.

I’ve already seen one of my Arts Degree colleagues graduate and apply for a job at McDonalds (in all seriousness), and so I’ve decided I must have a solid plan in place to avoid the food industry once and for all**. At first I considered a life of crime***, but surely that’s what everyone is expecting me to do (this explains my loved ones’ increasingly anxious inquiries as to what I’m going to do with the rest of my life), and I don’t like to do what is expected of me.

Which has led me to the next obvious choice: saving the world. It was a friend of mine who suggested I use my degree to resort to a life of heroism, mostly so I wouldn't have to continue giving vague explanations of my intentions to not be an English teacher****. Just this past week, I was able to share my new life goal with an acquaintance. "What can you do with an English degree?" he said. I responded, "well, I'm going to save the world." Then I asked him what his son was doing with his business degree. Turns out he'll be saving the world too. I may have stumbled upon a trend.

*Currently, my bass skills seem to be on par with those of my 20-month-old nephew, and his attention span for practicing is longer than mine.

**Not that I don't enjoy decorating cakes for a living, but now that I have a $20,000 degree under my belt I should at least give off the appearance of using it.

***A literature degree will indeed prepare you for a life of crime. All you need is one course on Victorian literature and you’ll be well-versed in the arts of kidnapping, seduction, and murder most foul. And then you learn effective ways of communicating with people and how to bullshit your way out of anything, and next thing you know you’re knocking over casinos with George Clooney in Vegas. Happens all the time.

****I know EXACTLY what I want to do. But when I tell people I want to be employed writing anything for anyone, they seem skeptical.