I’m sorry dad, I’m sorry mom, I’m just not meant for this system

Throw away that part of your life when you were special. Get rid of it, burn it, because it’ll never come back. 

I’ve started that mid-semester slump. I can’t seem to get out of bed for my classes anymore and I don’t really see the need to get out of my room except for food. I’ve started gaining weight, also. I’m not depressed anymore, but I have gotten lazy. I’m also trying to not drink as much. It was working for a while but then I drank way too much for my own good on Friday night, blacked out, and then was told by Gio that I had slept with some freshman I don’t remember meeting. (Let’s just hope I’m not pregnant.) Adding up my past experiences, I realized that most of them were drunken one-night stands. The rest were fuck buddies (with whom I had desperately hoped to start a relationship with but never did), and merely two of them were guys I was actually in a relationship with. I’m not proud of it. So something else I’m going to try to do is not get intimate with a guy unless I’m really dating him and he knows I like him, or we’re already together. Fuck buddies never turn into boyfriends and I’m tired of waking up after the weekend and not remembering what I’ve done. Maybe it’s just boyfriend season approaching, but I really wish there was a guy that I could fall in like with and start a relationship with. 

My classes are doing pretty good. I’m golden as far as passing and failing classes, although I might end up pulling a C in my Global Media Studies Class. As long as I’m above a 2.0, I’m happy. I really need to figure out what I’m doing with my life. I wish it didn’t take the communications school an entire five months to decide if I can transfer in or not. It really puts a halt to my plans, especially if they decide I can’t get in. 

If I don’t get in, I’m not sure what I can do. Maybe sociology? Psychology? Rhetoric seems like a maybe. It would be helpful in copy editing, I assume. 

I can’t wait for Christmas break. I’m really looking forward to not doing anything besides watching TCM and cooking and baking. And playing Xbox at my brother’s. And shooting the shit with Gabby. And maybe seeing Pat. (Although, I’m not getting my hopes up for that one.) It should be fun. 

At least I’m doing way better this year than last year (academically) and in the summer (emotionally).

I want to quit my job, school, my “friends,” my life.

Mostly just my job, though.

I fucking hate everyone I work with. I hate the hypocrisy. I hate the condescension. I hate  that the departments doing the least amount of work get the most say in things and how my department gets shit on for every fucking mistake that’s made, even if it’s not our fault, and we work the hardest and longest. I hate how I have to do things that aren’t even my job, but it gets pushed on us either way because no one’s going to say shit.

If I stick this out and become CDC, things are going to change. If they don’t, I’ll just fucking quit. It’s not worth my health or my grades. This is fucking ridiculous.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

I’ve been feeling a lot. Just feeling a lot in general. It’s like my emotions have become 10 times as strong. Like if I feel mad, I feel really fucking mad, or if I feel happy, it’s like I’m high. And if I feel bored or simple, I feel like I’m going to die or disappear.

Anyway, I asked if he was busy and he said he’s meeting some friend of his who just got back from France. They’re going to that annoyingly trendy coffee shop. He said he was sorry.

And now I just feel like punching something.

Frankie asked me a question that really made me evaluate myself about two or three weeks ago. “What would you rate your life — right now — at? One through 10.” 

I really had to think about this. 

Up until this exact time, I had everything planned out. In high school, I had known exactly what I wanted out of my life. I knew I wanted to work for an oil company. I knew I wanted to help some ‘big oil’ giant make a smooth and easy transition in adapting new technology. To do this, I was going to continue my good relations (after all, it’s about who you know, not what you know) with the Jackson School of Geology, get my degree in Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas, get an internship with Chevron, BP or even Shell, and I was going to eventually weasel my way into a high-paying job. I was going to pitch my brilliant ideas on how to find the most reasonable, cost-effective energy source optimized for consumer use and they were going to eat it up. I was going to save the world.

Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that fulfilling my hopes and dreams was going to be a lot harder than I thought. My first semester of college was full of depression, disappointment and failure. Because of my optimism, I was blinded in seeing that I have never been particularly strong in math — something that is undoubtedly helpful, if not required in the engineering field. I ended up loading my class schedule with chemistry, a third-year geology class, a UGS course titled “Philosophy of Earth Science” and an intermediate calculus course. Having never taken a calculus course in high school before, I quickly realized I was going to fail that class. But, of course, I had faith in myself and decided that if I could apply myself to hard work and dedication, surely I would make at least a B.

I didn’t. In fact, the only class I excelled in was my UGS course. This shouldn’t have surprised me. I’ve always had a strong background in reading and writing, and I’ve always loved research papers.

During winter break, I was able to grasp the notion that instead of living in a fantasy world where I could simply pick and choose my own academic strengths and weaknesses, I needed to find out what I truly enjoyed and was good at. I never had to take a step back and look at myself in this way, and without having the proper guidance readily available to steer me in the right direction, I did the next best thing. I turned to my friends for help. Luckily, a friend of mine had been toying around with the idea of transferring into the communications school to major in RTF. He talked about the introductory communications class he was taking and from what I heard, they sounded quite interesting. Classes with required movie screenings? Discussion classes where students actually … discussed? That’s when it hit me.

I know a lot about movies. In fact, I know a lot about pop culture in general. I also keep up with the news more than the average person my age does, and I love to talk about it. I was DEFINITELY in the wrong major.

So in my second semester at UT, I decided to experiment with my classes a little bit. I took an intro journalism class and an intro RTF class. I also took an improv theater class — mostly as a stress reliever, but also because of my love of acting and theater. Things changed for the better. I was happy in my classes. I was actually interested in the topics being discussed. I made grades that I was actually proud of. I finally felt like I was worthy of being at a place of higher education.

Sometime within that first month of classes, my journalism professor (by the way, if you ever get a chance to take a class with Bob Jensen, please do) invited the editor of The Daily Texan to come and recruit members for the staff. I was pretty interested in working for the newspaper, but I figured my lack of experience and education in the field of journalism was probably going to deter them from hiring me. I visited the Texan office anyway, filled out an application and signed up for try-out dates for a copy editor position (a seemingly less-threatening position than writer or photographer.) 

I got the job and I liked it a lot. It was stressful and the hours were long, but it was something I enjoyed, so I stuck with it. 

Now it’s the summer, and I’ve moved up to the position of Assistant Copy Desk Chief. (Catchy, eh?) I don’t know if I have much of a future in a career in journalism, but for now, it’s what I want to do. I’m still interested in RTF, so I am registered for two RTF classes in the fall. But as for deciding my major, or any life plans for that matter, I’m still completely unsure, and I’m OK with that. I’m young; I’ve still got time.  

As for my personal life, I had two serious relationships within the past year. Both of them were good while they lasted, but I’m glad they ended when they did. Since it’s the summer, there aren’t many guys to choose from, and I’m not looking to date. I don’t have any summer crushes or summer flings. 

I’ve met a lot of people, but I don’t really have a close niche of friends right now in Austin. The ones I do have are scattered around Texas (and one in Germany.) I’m not exactly lonely, but I am alone. 

I’m working a second job at an office for GeoFORCE, the program that initially got me interested in Geology in the first place. I have nothing but great things to say about the program and I have them to thank for me being in Austin. The job isn’t exciting, but it pays well, so I’ll stick to it while I can.

I’m living in an apartment that is apparently well-known for being the place to go to for “dawnce parties and chillgazes.” It’s pretty much a place where a lot of the DT staff come to hang out and party. I guess that would be a lot more exciting if the people who actually do most of the partying and chillgazing were actually here, but they’re at out-of-state internships, so the place is pretty much desolate and boring in the summer. If they were here, however, I wouldn’t be able to rent out the room I’m in and this whole thing would be completely irrelevant, so I guess in an ass-backwards sort of way it works out for the best that no one’s here in the summer and it’s boring. Well, no one’s sort of here. Well … two out of the three guys who live here aren’t here. The one that is here is my boss at the newspaper and he’s a pretty chill dude who’s hardly here, probably because he works a lot and he also has a girlfriend. It must be so fucking weird for him, though, because all of the furniture and everything else in this place is still the same and nothing’s changed except that his two friends suddenly got replaced by some random chick and a guy that he’s known since kindergarten but he never really hangs out with. Oh yeah, from what I’ve gathered, the other non-native (other than myself) to the apartment has been friends with the three amigos since forever but is pretty much never here, and when he is here, he locks himself away in his room. So that’s that.

There isn’t really anything else to say, other than I really, REALLY cannot wait for fall to get here. I’m sort of stuck in right in the middle of a life of misery and a life of bliss. As for now, I’m just waiting for something to happen. ”Nothing amazing ever happens here, everything is ordinary.”

Oh yeah, I rated my life at an exact five-point-zero.

There’s probably so many copy mistakes in this, but it’s 2 a.m. and I don’t care, so suck it.

“In the House in a Heartbeat” is the name of a song better known as the theme song to 28 Days Later. I can’t sum up a better reason why I named my personal blog after the song other than I really like it and it has been stuck in my head for a couple of days.  

This is going to be my personal blog. I think my LiveJournal needs to be retired, so I’ve migrated over to Tumblr. Unlike my other Tumblr blogs, “Elyana Reviews Everything” and “What Are You Looking At?” this one is going to be mainly text and it is going to be much more of a diary or journal and much less of ‘Hey look a funny picture! LOLZ.’

If you’re reading this and you know me, I shouldn’t have to remind you how much of an open book I can be. With that in mind, I’m leaving this as a disclaimer that anything I write needs to be read with a grain of salt. I assure you that if I post something that offends you, I probably wrote it in a passionate fit of rage/excitement/disappointment, and consequently, was not thinking of the consequences.