Monday, the honeymoon period with this time of unemployment officially ended. I’ve started feeling useless, bored, and unmotivated. I’m not quite sure what brought it on. I’m thinking it’s a mixture of realizing I no longer have enough time before moving to LA June to get a part-time job without feeling guilty when I leave (after I will have asked off for a trip or two AND for senior week/graduation) and finding out I failed one of the teacher credentialing tests in California. 

I keep telling myself to stop complaining about these next few months of nothingness. I’m SO lucky to have a job at all in June, so that I don’t need a job right now, so that I can sit around bored without feeling guilty about it. But I can’t stop feeling guilty about my lack of working. I feel like a drain on my family, even though I’ve done everything right up to this point. I graduated early to save money. I’m living at home to save money. I worked hard and guaranteed myself a job (with good pay AND health benefits) for the next two years! I should just enjoy this time, but that’s not the kind of person I am. If I’m not contributing right now, I feel bad spending money right now, no matter what I’ve done in the past or will do in the future. 

Also not me is this lack of…anything. I need goals and schedules. I need places to go. I need projects, and I have none. I could force myself to read some teaching books, but that isn’t enough to motivate me to get out of bed in the morning. When I agreed to graduate early, I never expected to be in a situation like this. In my mind,  I thought I’d get a part time job to save money and enable me to take some guilt free trips to Boston to see my friends (and thus not feel like I’m missing out on my last semester of college) and maybe finally get myself a DSLR that would keep me busy enough at home, thus making graduating early alright. Instead, I have no job, since no one around here is hiring (Thanks, Economy!), and thus, have guilt at the thought of traveling or doing ANYTHING that would waste money, even though, I shouldn’t feel guilty (see above). So I’m double bored, as having a job would enable me to have other things to do, and not having a job results in having nothing to do. This is all now exacerbated by the fact that I have to spend some time (and thus, money) in LA to retake the teaching test in March, taking away money AND time I could have used to get a job. 

Bah! Ok…no more rambling. I need to think of some things to be excited about: going to LA when my best friend happens to be visiting for Spring Break. The NJ/PA/DE meet-up (hopefully) next week. Getting a new computer soon (ish…this keeps getting pushed back…but I’m being POSITIVE. Postive. Postive. Positive.)

Sorry this post is all woe-is-me when things could be SO much worse, but it feels nice to get this out and not just rant about it to my mom, who just tells me not to feel bad, which I wish I could do. 

Tomorrow, I’m going to try to write up my You Inspire Me post. That’s a good goal for the day, right? Right.

So it seems to have become midly popular to post some mix tapes around the internet for everyone to benefit from others good music tastes. I, sadly, cannot do this, as I have to admit, my music taste resembles that of a 14-year-old girl…wait no, 14 year olds know what’s cool. Maybe I’m more like an eight year old. 

Yes, my top played list in iTunes consists mostly of High School Musical soundtracks and Miley Cyrus’s Breakout, with, in my defense, a few pop ups from The Fray, Rufus Wainwright, Guster and The Decemberists. I’m not a total lost. And in my defense, I mostly listen to music when I’m working out or walking somewhere in a bad mood (otherwise I’m listening to podcasts) and let’s face it – moody, emo, or punk music doesn’t do the trick in any of those cases. Only Miley knows how to get me to class on time! 

I blame my teenage obsession with NSYNC for stunting my music tastes and my all encompassing TV and Theater obsessions for taking up all of my free time, leaving me none to develop any adult taste in music. Oh well, it’s too late now, and I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding my iPod in my pocket on the T so others don’t judge me.

I know. I kind of technically failed to post today, but you know what? I posted twice yesterday, once at almost midnight, and I fully plan to post again tomorrow, so this totally counts as my post for today, Tuesday the 11th. It’s only 11 past midnight for pete’s sake. Plus, if I haven’t gone to sleep yet, it’s not a new day. So there. 

To cheer myself up, I will leave you with (yes another) amazing video. I present to you: Night School Musical.

And with that…good night!

So I can keep making excuses for not blogging, and I certainly have them. My mom visiting, too much work of all kinds, my personal slash social life slowly falling apart (through my own doing), constant nausea due to all of this (well, not my mom visiting…that was a good time.) I just can’t seem to deal with my life right now (evidenced by me crying on the phone to my mom this morning for a good half hour), so I just need another couple days to process and see if things are going to work out before I can sit down and organize my thoughts about anything.

Sorry this is cryptic and depressing. I promise I’ll write a really awesome Mom weekend recap (complete with a large list of Boston restaurant recommendations found during said weekend) and some kind of update about my actual life super soon. 

Until then, I hope your lives are far less confusing than mine.

Hello? Remember me? The owner of this little space on the internet? Yeah, me, who has trouble prioritizing blogging over things like homework, actual work, seeing friends, and um…sleeping? Yeah, that’s me. *waves* 

I hate neglecting this blog, but I’ve been so busy, that I seem to not only always have something to do, but I also seem to always have two things to do, thus I always feel guilty no matter what I’m doing. What fun! Case in point, this weekend, my mom is coming to visit, which I’ve been excited about for a while, but it is also the weekend I planned to go see “Title of Show” with my friends in New York. Way to write things down, Amanda! So now, I have to find someone to take my place in New York, because I would feel like a total bitch ditching my mom to go see a show. Boo. 

But this week has been eventful in many ways. Some of which I shouldn’t really talk about here…but I might…eventually. Stay tuned. (Please note: this is a time I wish I was an anonymous blogger. I finally get good stories, and I have to censor them. Double boo.) 

So without further ado, I present to you….a bulleted list. (Get excited!)

This week I…

• Had a phone interview for Teach for America that I thought went alright. It wasn’t my best phone interview ever, but I definitely didn’t bomb. I was tentatively hopeful. Well, today I found out, I got invited to an in-person interview! It’s the final step of the whole admission process and consists of teaching a 5-minute lesson and a personal interview, among other things. The interview is in two weeks, so now on top of all my other fun school work, I get to think of things to teach other people. That’s a good thing, right? Right. 
• Had a fun girls night out. Jillian and I had a ridiculously delicious dinner at Tremont 647 in the South End. My dinner consisted of a mouthwatering flank steak with pistachio pesto, roasted vegetables and HUGE rosemary tater tots filled with fontina cheese. Yeah…it was insane. I also had this beautiful pink gin cocktail. It’s my new favorite thing, basically ever. We then had to waste some time before our friends got off work, so we decided to go up to Top of the Hub, the restaurant/bar at the top of the Prudential Building to get a drink and gawk at the view. It was beautiful, and as an added bonus, we got to ride down 52 flights with three middle-aged drunk women who claimed to look like Jackie O and asked us for cigarettes. They also remarked that we looked like sisters since we had the same hair color. Good times. The rest of the night was spent at various bars on Boylston, where I overheard many drunken 20-somethings discussing their financial portfolios. I felt mildly out of place, but I’d been drinking since 7, so I managed. 
• Went on a 1AM run to IHOP with my friends. I even got to drive there in a Blue Prius! My main hobby in LA was counting Prius’s as I drove to work (one time, I saw over 70 in a day, and on my way from San Diego to LA, I spotted OVER TWO HUNDRED!) It was like a dream come true – my life coming full circle. We also discovered IHOP is the place to be after 2AM, as its the only place open after 2. Damn Boston bars and their early closing times, not that we’d been at a bar. We’d just been hanging out…and decided to drive to IHOP. At one in the morning. I know what you’re thinking: you wish you could hang out with people as cool as my friends. 
• Bought an AMAZING winter coat. I had an hour off of work, decided it was freezing, and ran two blocks to the Shops at the Prudential Center for some power shopping. I hit (in ONE HOUR) 344, J. Crew, Banana Republic, Saks 5th Avenue, Gap, and Free People. I, of course, found a coat at the first store I went to (344), but had to check everywhere else to make sure they didn’t have anything better. They didn’t, so I ran back to grab the coat. I even got $25 off for being a student. Power shopping win! It’s soooo pretty, and I’ve been wearing non-stop, possibly even when sleeping. I wish I were joking. 

My last post was getting a little too lengthy, so I decided to split it up. Anyway, here goes part two:

After only three days back in Boston and still exhausted, I dragged myself out of bed at 4AM on Thursday morning to catch a train back to my parent’s house in Delaware. Aside from having to have my cab driver drop me by an ATM when I realized he didn’t take credit cards, my trip was uneventful. I never even had to share my seat, which on Amtrak trains, is quite an accomplishment. 

My mom, along with her parents (the grandparents I had seen in New York), picked me up from the station and thus began my family loaded day. While still suffering from a travel hangover, I had to get myself through dinner with my mom’s parents, my dad’s  parents (who drove in for dinner), and my own parents. It was great to see my whole family, don’t get me wrong. I love my family. It is just a lot to take when you are alone with that many adult family members. Luckily, the conversation rarely turned to me and questioning my life, although it did come up. (I learned that in order to get married, I need to treat finding a husband like a job, which I obviously am not doing. No wonder I’m alone! What wonderful insight…/end sarcasm)

The next day, all the family headed home and were quickly replaced by my parents’ friends, who all happened to be coming through town at once. In the morning, my dad’s best friend from Alabama stopped by, as he was passing through for work (I think…). It was nice to hear what his kids were up to, as I spent a lot of time with them during our five year stint in the South.

Later that night, my parents’ college (in my dad’s case) slash childhood (in my mom’s case) friends, who actually introduced my parents to each other, came to stay for the night. I’d met them before, but the last time was at least 6 year ago. (Both then and now, I feel like I should thank them for my existence or something.) This was the first time, however, I’d heard some of their college stories while still in college. It was the first time I really saw how similar my dad and John are and how they could have been great friends in college, could have even been people I would have been friends with in college. It was the first time I really got to hear stories from back then and appreciate them. It was kind of weird but also kind of nice to think of my parents as people I would like even if they weren’t my parents.

The next day, we headed to Fabric Row in Philadelphia to go to a famous deli for lunch. I ate so much I felt nauseous, and again, we had an excellent time just talking and eating something called “Health Salad.” (“Do you think it’s made of health?”) Sadly, I think we cancelled out the benefits of the health salad with the eight cookies we bought on the way out. The day ended with my mom and I shopping and then coming home to watch “Michael Clayton,” (stopping every five minutes, of course, to explain what we knew and what we had yet to find out to my mom, who responded that she thinks she “lacks the mental capacity to watch movies.”) 

Sunday came way too fast, and the last place I wanted to go was the train station. I had finally resigned myself to leaving as we walked in the doors only to find my train was delayed an hour and a half. Blerg. 

Again, overwhelmed by not wanting to leave home, where I felt relaxed and happy to go back to my messy apartment where I usually feel agitated and alone, I started to cry. Lately, I feel as if I’m always on the brink of breaking down for no particular reason and when something pushes me just the tiniest bit, I crack and become a blubbering mess. Again, my parents assured me it wasn’t a big deal, which, of course, it wasn’t.

To turn the situation around, we took the opportunity to walk down the Riverwalk to a restaurant so I could eat, as I wouldn’t be getting back to Boston anytime soon. I calmed down as we ate, and my mom kept checking the status of my train. After being told it was still an hour and fifteen minutes behind, we walked back to the station, thinking we had time to spare.

When I walked in the station with my mom, we looked at the board, and my heart dropped. It seemed to say that my train was boarding right now, only an hour after it had been supposed to get in. I didn’t understand but also didn’t seem to have time to think about it. I ran up the escalator with my bags and jumped on the train just as the doors closed, thanking God I hadn’t missed it. I found a seat, briefly wondering if I had gotten on the right train, as the boards are mildly confusing about what is going on. I was reassured, however, when they announced the next stop as Philadelphia, which is always the stop after mine on the regional train. On the phone with my mom, she urged me to ask what train I was on, as the board had changed right after I ran up to the track, leading her to believe maybe it was not my train that was boarding. I blew her off, saying I was going the right way, so I wasn’t worried. 

As I settled in, we pulled in and then out of Philadelphia. As we pulled away the conductor came on the intercom stating the train number. It wasn’t mine. Of course.

Again, the tears came. Why couldn’t I just get through one simple task without making myself feel like a complete idiot? I texted my mom telling her she was right. The conductor came by, asking for tickets, and I explained to him what had happened. He didn’t seem to think it was that big of a deal, telling me to just switch at the next stop as my train was behind this one by about 25 minutes, advice also given by my parents, who conceded that I wasn’t crazy: the board did make it seem like it had been my train that was boarding. 

I got off in Trenton and wandered around looking for where MY train would be coming. After asking and being given the track number by an obviously annoyed Amtrak employee, I waited on the platform, staring at the pouring rain, wondering if God too was crying about my stupidity and bad traveling luck. 

Eventually, my train came and took me back to Boston, granted a few hours later than I had anticipated. 

Now, I’m back to the grind, somehow more tired than before any of these vacations and more wary of traveling than ever.

I need to stop sitting around, doing nothing and feeling useless. I need to set myself some summer goals. Even if they sound ridiculous, I think they will help me get mildly focused on accomplishing something. Here goes: 

1) Visit Emerson and NYU to get information about Theater Education programs. 

2) Begin application process to Emerson and NYU (if everything looks good upon visiting.)

3) Build up to running a 5K by August (in hopes of maybe running 10K by October for Tufts 10K)

4) Give a good audition for Kaplan (the SAT etc. prep company where I applied for a teaching/tutoring job. You have to audition before you can interview, so I’m only going for the immediate goal first, then I’ll set some kind of goal from there.) 

5) Leave the apartment everyday (this sounds silly, but lately, this hasn’t been happening every day. Yes, I realize how sad this sounds.) 

6) Get some interesting stories and BLOG MORE! (My lack of blogging is stemming solely from my lack of anything interesting to say. This needs to change, pronto.)

7) Start studying for the GRE’s. (This just goes with #2, I suppose.) 

Hrmm, that’s about all I can think of for now. I am excited about a few things coming up. I’m FINALLY seeing Sex and the City tonight, which feels like an event years in the making. (I, sadly, couldn’t plan ahead far enough to get tickets for last night. Wah wah….) I have the Boston Bloggah’s happy hour coming up, AND my trip to NYC to visit Lindsey, Jillian, and my sister, Stephanie, coming at the end of June. If I can just focus on not sucking for a little while, things will start moving faster and getting better. I’m learning I don’t do well with drastic transitions, in terms of my free time. Last semester, my schedule was ridiculously packed and planned. Now I can’t motivate myself to do anything that isn’t required. Hopefully, I’ll just starting thinking of all these goals as requirements, and I’ll get them done. Here’s hoping…

I’ve been feeling like I have nothing to write about lately. Well, first, I had no computer access, then my days began to consist of nothing but errand running and apartment cleaning. Not the stuff of inspirational blog postings.

To catch everyone up: This past weekend, I finally moved back to Boston, spending the weekend with my mom at my uncle’s house, seeing my cousins, and easing myself back into East Coast living (brunch in the South End, Lunch with Patrick in Faneuil Hall, shopping on Newbury). 

Then my friend (and my little in my sorority) Lynn moved into our summer apartment and proceeded to clean the entire place. I’m not used to living in places with three months worth of dust and grime build up as I’m what I refer to as a constant cleaner. If I’m standing in the kitchen waiting for something to boil, I’m wiping down the counter with clorox wipes. When I brush my teeth, I wipe down my sink. You get the picture. This way things never reach a point where I actually have to spend entire days cleaning. Sadly, it was unavoidable here. Also unavoidable was doing a grocery store run for all my kitchen basics, which I’m SO tired of doing, having done it there times in the past 9 months alone. Happily, next time I move it will only be across campus so I can just take all my spices and frozen foods with me. 

I also started class last night, which was a little hard to get in the mindset for as I haven’t had a real class since december. It was also hard because there are only five people in the class, which kind of forces attentiveness, an already difficult task in a three and half hour class. My professor proved interesting, however, as she walked into class with her adorable 17 year old dog in a stroller, then half way through class had to stop lecturing to buy the dog sun chips. 

Today I’ve been in a weird funk of not wanting to leave the apartment as I have nothing concrete to do. I should be running to Shaw’s to get things I forgot to or could not pick up at Trader Joe’s or making a copy of the building key because for some reason Lynn and I were only given one and have been having to meet up every time one of us wants to get in the building. This is my problem with having free time. I do absolutely nothing with it. I know I’m going to get busy soon, so I should get these things done now, but I just want to sit around and watch How I Met Your Mother DVDs or read commentary on David Cook’s triumphant win last night. 

I’m hoping once I get busier I will get out of this funk. This weekend Jillian and Patrick will be in town, so we can have a LA type party around Boston. I also go back to my work-study job, which I love, tomorrow. I can’t deal with not getting myself to leave my apartment for much longer. 

Hopefully my life will get more interesting soon. These wrap-up entries depress me. 

I’m not sure if I’ve had enough time to gain the proper perspective on this past semester. I’ve been home less than 24 hours, but it has been almost two weeks since I finished working (at least at one of my internships), so I figured now is as good a time as any to start debriefing on that particular aspect of my time in LA. Here goes on what I’m sure will turn into a thesis: 

When I started thinking about going to LA, I thought of it as more of a chance to gain experience that would help me get to where I knew I wanted to go. I thought of it as a test run, but not really in a work-related way. I knew I wanted to work in television. I just wanted to make sure I liked LA. I had no doubt I would like my jobs. Sure, I knew there would be a lot of getting coffee, covering scripts, and basic grunt work, but I had absolutely not doubt in my mind that working in development or casting was exactly where I wanted to go.

In the beginning, it all seemed to be going fantastically. I had four offers for internships (2 production companies, one soap opera, and one casting office), leaving me with the ability to pick exactly what I wanted to do. I ended up choosing the production company that worked in both film and television (where my interests were) and the casting company, because they focused on theater (which I also love). It seemed to be a perfect balance.

In the beginning, the internships were exactly what I thought they would be in terms of getting coffee and answering phones, but perhaps with a little more grocery shopping and imdb-ing than I thought. I loved everyone was I working with. I felt very inside the entertainment industry. I was reading production binders from well-known pilots. Lunch consisted of sitting in the conference watching TV with all the assistants.  I was doing exactly what I thought I wanted to do. 

Soon, however, I started to question things. I sat at my desk for hours reading terrible TERRIBLE scripts. I went to pick up a blackberry for a junior executive who had “broken his in Mexico,” then found out a month later he had sent another intern to get him another blackberry because he had spilled soy sauce on the one I got him. I spent 6 (!!!) hours on the phone calling out auditions for understudies in a two week run of an experimental play. I found myself counting down the hours until I could get the hell out of the office and into the sunshine. I sat shaking at assistants’ desks while I covered for them for the afternoon, fearing the ringing of the phone because it would mean trying to figure out how to conference in the executive on location in New Orleans without losing the original caller. I found myself realizing I in no way wanted to ever have to do what the assistant’s did or maybe even what the executives did. They had meetings. They talked on the phone a lot. They wheeled and dealed. It was all very business like. I never wanted to work in a business or in an office. That is why I didn’t go to business school. I always thought that working in development, I would feel like I was helping to make and shape what was on television. What I ended up feeling like was that the executives were like middlemen. They found projects and brought them to someone else to make. I wanted to make the TV. I wanted to be in the excitement. The office was definitely not where the excitement was. The casting office felt the same. I wanted to be more a part of the process, but the casting director is so much more a facilitator than an actual decision maker. It was all sorting through submissions and scheduling auditions so that someone else could make the decisions. These jobs weren’t what I wanted for myself. 

Every day became a constant debate in my mind. Today wasn’t too bad, but could I do this for a year? For two years? Is this what every job is like or is it just this office? I started to wonder whether there was a better job for me. Maybe I should reconsider writing. I always liked that in class. Perhaps I would be happier working in production, outside or on set, running around, actually seeing things getting made. Maybe I should just find a job in theater. Or maybe I just didn’t like the realities of working, and the jobs I didn’t have just seem great because I wasn’t off doing them. Maybe once I got there, I would hate them too. 

I think that was the hardest part of this whole experience for me: realizing that I can never realy know what something will be like or if I’ll actually like doing something until I’m actually doing it. I feel like I can’t trust myself anymore to make any kind of decision based on what I think I might like, because, well, I’ve been wrong before. Why couldn’t I be wrong again?

So here I am, entering my last few months of school with absolutely NO idea where I should go or what I should do once I’m done. My classes in the fall kind of revisit things I thought I didn’t want to do (writing, production), but am now reconsidering. Hopefully, I’ll get an even better idea of my strengths in them to see if I could pursue them once I graduate. I’m also going back to work at the Huntington Theatre, where I’m hopefully going to try to work in some different departments to see if I like that as well. I’m hoping that as the summer and fall semester go by, I can add to my experiences this past semester to have some semblance of an idea of where I am going. My mom keeps assuring me I don’t need to have a plan, and I’m not delusional enough to think I need a five or ten year plan to be able to do anything after graduation. I’ve just always had a very clear goal in my head for where I was going. Ever since I was in 7th grade, I’ve known exactly what I wanted to do. It’s changed many MANY times, but I’ve never been where I am now. I’ve never not had any idea. I feel so aimless and lost. It sucks. I thrive on direction, on having a goal and reaching it. If I have no goal, how can I figure out my next move. I just don’t want to suffer through some crappy entry level position not knowing what I am working towards. 

I guess the point of this post is that I learned this semester that I don’t know anything. I didn’t absolutely  hate where I worked, but I would think twice before accepting an entry level position in similar organizations after I graduate. Thank god I have 7 months until the end of college. Hopefully, I’ll have some sort of breakthrough from now until then that will at least give me some insight as to what to do next. If not, at least I have 7 months before I have to decide anything definitive. 

Up next: A wrap-up of  my life experience in LA outside of work – think bars, cars, and movies! Horay!