Stream of Consciousness 06/30

Was it just a week ago that I found out George Carlin died? I found out about Cyd Charisse at the same time. And just a week prior to that, Tim Russert passed. I haven’t been able to watch Meet The Press since the tribute episode. I’m not ready, I guess. George Carlin. What a hoot. I was introduced to Carlin when I was in high school. My mother decided I was old enough to watch without having my mind completely blown, I guess. Well, it was. I laughed. Hysterically at times. It didn’t help that it was about the same time I was allowed to watch some of Richard Pryor’s routines.

See, my mom did something really wacky and radical. She parented. Single, working, two jobs sometimes, and she set rules. And expected us to follow them. Instead of complaining about pornography and graphic language, she did her job and kept it away from us until she felt we were ready for it. I saw my first R-rated movie at 10. Granted, it was the Blues Brothers and it got an R rating basically for one word. It would just barely make PG-13, now. But she took us to see it. First, though, she saw it by herself. She did that with Beverly Hills Cop, too, even though I was older. My brother was still 11 or 12 when that one came out. She screened things before letting us see it, to decide if it was something she wanted us exposed to. Gosh. What an incredible idea. She was hardly lenient, but she wasn’t strict, either. And let’s face it, my brother and I were basically good kids to begin with. We and the kids on my street got into what I refer to as “Dennis the Menace” trouble. The worst thing was two of the guys nearly burning down a house, playing in the garage with fire and oily rags. And most of us went on to college. Considering the neighborhood where I grew up, that was no mean feat.

Mostly I’m just stressed about, well, everything. I want to finish school, I really do. And my confidence is flagging in a big way with this accounting course. It’s tough. Really tough. Not impossible, but tough. And I’ve got one more semester of it. If I can take my reference material with me, I can probably walk into an entry-level accounting job and do just fine. But with an MBA, I think they’ll expect a bit more of me. Confidence has never been a strength for me. Cover it up with other behavior, that’s my policy. I pretty much work with the assumption that people are just tolerating me, looking for any excuse to walk away. Including those related to me. So when I find someone who’s willing to hang around me, even when I’m feeling my most annoying (yeah, sometimes I do it on purpose. Some people actually find it endearing. No accounting for tastes), I tend to hold on to them forever. Even if I go months without actually speaking to them, I consider them part of my life unless I am told otherwise.

I’ve written a cheat sheet for my accounting exam. We’re permitted a single sheet of 8.5 x 11, with whatever we want on it, both sides if we wish. It’s amazing how much you can fit on a piece of paper if you use a small enough font. I’ve found that in portrait orientation, an 8pt font and three columns seems most useful, four columns if you use a landscape orientation. I’ll be taking my exam tomorrow afternoon, 1:00PM. I’m a little nervous about it. Kinda like Phoenix is a little hot in the summer. I’ve done all I can do, now I just have to trust that I’ve learned something. I know I have, I just don’t know if I can translate that to a decent exam grade. It’ll be okay, I guess.

I miss writing. Whoa, warning, sudden shifts in topic ahead! Anyway, I miss writing. Not this stuff, this journalizing. I mean stories. I used to write all the time. I can’t do it any more, and I’m not sure why. My mind is a complete blank when it comes to ideas, and I can’t complete even a short story any more. I used to write tons of poetry, published articles online, was actually well-known in certain circles for my short stories. Maybe it’s practice. Like my body.

Yeah, another shift. I used to be heavier than I am now, but I’ve never been so squishy. I always had some level of muscle tone. But then, I also didn’t get ill after a few days of exercising, or so exhausted it was all I could do to get out of bed, like I do now. I always had an hourglass figure. At some points, it was a 24-hour glass, granted, but it was still the right general shape. Now I’m all squishy. I’m not happy about that.

Lastly, I’m trying not to panic about my health in general. Heaven knows I could use a therapist of some sort, but there’s also the physical health. I was concerned a few days ago, I felt like everything had gradually been getting dimmer. So, out of curiosity, particularly since I could feel pressure, not behind my eyes as with sinus problems, but actually in my eyes, I looked to see if there was a connection between hypertension and sight loss. Lo and behold, there is. Serious, uncontrolled hypertension can lead to blindness. Yay. Of course, I had a light burn out, a compact fluorescent, which apparently gets more and more dim as it nears the end of its life. I changed the light bulb yesterday and suddenly, I could see better. Hmm.

It’s still a very real concern, I do feel pressure in my eyes and occasionally feel like I’ve got a blind spot forming in my right eye. But without health insurance, there’s not a thing I can do about it. Instead, I can sit here and make a game of figuring out what irreversible condition I’ll get first. Will my kidneys completely fail before I can get insurance? Or will I have a stroke, damaging only part of my body? Or maybe I’ll just go blind. Or my ceiling could collapse and drop a bathtub on my head. Or, really, I could be walking out to my car and be hit by a rouge antelope. That last is part of a trick I learned. As my mother observed, I’m a worrywart. It can get seriously out of hand. Like, so out of hand, it’s crippling. So, to cope, I learned to interject something absolutely ridiculous, to help get me off the train of thought. It actually works. I’m trying to teach it to my bestest friend. She’s a bit of a worrier, too. Part and parcel of the whole ADD/OCD/Depression spectrum.

At least my class is taking my mind off the fact that it’s been nearly a year and I still have no real source of income, save student loans, and very little prospect of finding one. And that the only reason I can devote the time I need to my studies is because I’m not working. The employment agency I’m signed up with keeps saying they’ll be contacting me soon, then they don’t. And I don’t know if I’m glad or not. Right now, not that big a deal, I have enough money to get through the next couple of months, as long as I remember I don’t have any more money coming in. It’s gonna get real interesting, soon.