Maybe it’s the two day food coma I’m in. Maybe it’s the Sandra Bullock/Ryan Reynolds three-movie marathon I just had with my sister. (That’s The Blind Side, Definitely Maybe, and The Proposal, in case you were wondering) or maybe it’s the fact that I’m lonely in my relatively large apartment for the weekend, but I’ve finally realized and accepted something extremely important:

I have no idea what I want my life to be like: what kind of person I want to be, what kind of person I want to be with, what kinds of things I want to do, what kinds of places I want to live. No fucking clue.

Awesome.

Instead of being all negative and whiney, I’m going to try to follow some of the excellent advice you guys left me and be postive and happy about all the things that are going well, because, really? My life is going pretty well.

Well, I will pause for a brief moment of bitchery….The DMV can suck it. They can suck it HARD. Yesterday, I took my second trip there in two weeks, waited in 4 lines, gave them $1500 (well, my dad gave them $1500), was told I had to pay a $200 late fine because the LAST trip I took ended in utter failure (I contested this…angrily), yelled at the people helping me for the first time ever (I’m overly nice to everyone. This was a big deal), and after 5 (yes FIVE) hours, finally got my California plates and driver’s license. I think, however, it cost me my faith in government. I’ll have to watch copious amounts of The West Wing to get that back.

Anyway, things that are going well…

Friday I went bowling with my co-workers, like all of them. I don’t know if I emphasize this enough, but the staff at my school is comically amazing. They actually make intelligent, thoughful, and caring decisions about students, about what would actually be best for them, about how we can make them successful, happy, and prepared for work and college. It makes me sad and mildly angry that not every school can be run like mine is, with students being the most important factor in decision making. It makes so much sense, yet it seems like no one does it.

Besides being awesome teachers and all that business, they are fun. Like ridiculously fun. Like cheering louder than the entire bowling alley when I finally (amazingly) got a strike after 6 frames of gutter balls and starting dance parties in the middle of the lanes after a number of drinks. I doubt my high school teachers were ever this much fun, although, I kind of hope they were.

My kids are also kind of amazing. I’ve gotten two emails over the break from kids wanting to know what they can do to pull up their grades, and I spent two hours after school on Friday sitting with two girls in my class discussing Twilight and eating cookies. How is that not an amazing end to the week?

And the best thing about my job slash life? We have this ENTIRE week off! It’s literally the longest Thanksgiving break I’ve ever heard of, and despite spending the better part of my day yesterday at the DMV, it’s been an excellent break thus far, and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet. I’ve played beach vollyball, seen New Moon, eaten all-you-can-eat tacos, gone to the dentist (where they let me watch House while getting my teeth cleaned!), gotten my haircut, and been to a mildly ridiculous birthdary party. Tonight my sister is coming over to help me cook dinner, drink wine, and watch Glee. She’s staying over tonight to prepare for tomorrow when we will embark on a Gilmore Girl-esque thanksgiving adventure. We start at noon by meeting our San Diego relatives for lunch at the Montage in Beverly Hills for, what I assume, will be a ridiculously fancy Thanksgiving “dinner.” We’re then heading out to her neighbor’s dinner and then to her boyfriend’s dinner. I anticipate not being able to move by six.

If that is the case, I’m sure I won’t be able to type, so I hope everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving!

I have severe grass is always greener syndrome. I look forward to trips then long to sleep in my own bed the whole time. I order one dish at a restaurant and instantly regret all the others I didn’t get. I look at other people and ruminate endlessly about how whatever their situation is, it’s endlessly better than mine. I went to LA and couldn’t wait to get back to Boston, and by the time I ended my senior year in Boston, I was itching to get back to LA. I’m restless and unpleasable. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever be happy or satisfied with what I have or if I’ll always be thinking about what I don’t have.

As I’ve become tired and had a few more bad days teaching – not that they’re all bad or that I’m not happy- I’ve wondered, and I really hate admitting this, but I have wondered if I made the right decision. Is this really what I want to be doing for the next two years? Would I be happier if I’d taken my other proposed path – staying in Boston, studying theater education, possibly working at my old theater job?

This weekend didn’t help. I spent most of the weekend driving back and forth between LA and Berkeley, as my friends and I took a quick road trip to see American Idiot at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. During the show, I almost started crying and not just because the show was phenomenal, which it most definitely was. (If you will be in the New York area next year, get tickets to see it on Broadway! I’m predicting it will be a hit. I mean, Green Day music PLUS the creative team behind Spring Awakening? What’s not to like?)

I got emotional and nostalgic because it reminded me how much I love theater and how much I miss being connected to it. Theater was my life growing up, and I definitely took my ridiculously amazing work-study job at the professional theater connected to my university for granted. I mean, I got free tickets to Broadway-caliber professional shows and got to spend my weekends hanging out with the cast of those shows…as my job. I had conversations about art and life, as well as boggle tournaments, with professional actors from all over the country while doing my homework, and I got paid for it. I mean, I definitely enjoy that my job now is much more challenging and, ultimately, more important that that job was, but I miss being around those kinds of people, I miss being around stage doors, and costume designers, and opening night parties, and overtures. I miss what I experienced this weekend, and I hate living in a town where that experienced is consistently undervalued.

And all that makes me think I’m not yet where I should be. I know I won’t be teaching forever, or at least, not teaching English forever, because theater is too important to me. Eventually, I hope to combine my love of theater with my teaching experience now by getting my Masters like I planned if I hadn’t gotten into TFA, but in this moment, riding the high of live musical theater and my road trip fever, two years feels like forever to be away from that world….and I keep wondering if I made the right call.

New post over at my long forgotten photo blog, mainly because my photos look stupid and small in this layout. Check it out. I mean, if you feel like it.