What day?

I woke up this morning to the belligerent buzzing of my alarm. I sat up and asked, "What day is it?" I slid out of bed and groped at the drawers under it so I could get some clean clothes.

"What day is it?" I asked myself again, out loud, as I headed off to the shower, where I sung songs from Annie. (It's a sickness, I know.) Eventually, the sun came up, and I stepped out.

I dressed, combed my hair, and headed back to my room. The light was off, so I flicked the switch. Finally, the calendar was visible, Thursday. Work first then straight to school.

Work is... well, I'm not sure how to explain it when I'm not miserable. It just is. I go, make coffee-based drinks, try to please people who don't want to be pleased, sing songs to myself, and hold back the urge to throw beans at everyone. Work is like--Have all of you seen Garden State yet? Did anyone else watch that new show Veronica Mars last night? They both have perfect examples of what I'm going to describe.--these scenes in movies and TV shows where there's one person sitting on a couch or a bench staring and the people around this person are in fast-forward, obviously doing something, going somewhere, moving. That's what work is like, me standing still and everyone else in fast-forward. Once in a while, the world slows down to my pace, breaks into my thoughts, but only for an instant before it whizzes away without me. In the end, I make sure to say good-bye to everyone working, using each person's name, before I walk out the door. I'm not sure why I do it. I sometimes fantasize that maybe I'll disappear if I don't remind people that I do exist, maybe that's why.

I like school.

For those who don't know, and since I can't remember if I've actually written it in this experiment in narcissism, I earned myself a BA in English some two and a quarter years ago. I seriously thought about teaching High School for a while there. I didn't really want to teach, I didn't think it would give me the energy most teacher seemed to get. I thought it would sap my strength, test my patience, and increase my stress without any personal or monetary rewards. At the time, though, I thought it was my only real option (since I fear that great standardized test we call the GRE). I went to the university (that didn't end in the phrase "of Phoenix") to my parent's house, since I was living there at the time, to discuss this teaching thing with a professional. In the end, she asked me if I wanted her honest opinion. I always prefer honesty, I said. She told me that she thought that I could make an excellent High School English teacher because I had an obvious passion for literature and a desire to see this passion spread to other. This made me happy. Then she said that she didn't think I should be a High School teacher because it didn't seem like the place for me. She recognized that I am a person who doesn't really have a lot a patience for people who don't want to be where they are. "The kids in High Schools are forced to be there," she said. "If you're lucky, three out of the thirty will be interested in what you're teaching, and I don't think those are the kinds of odds a person like you would need to stick with this profession. Honestly, Josh, I don't think you should pursue a career in teaching."

I shook her hand, thanked her for her time, and left. Everything she said was right and, most importantly, she gave me a good reason to stop thinking about my teaching credential.

That fall, while living with my parents and working at 'Bucks, I started attending the local JC part time. I took ceramics (my artistic passion that I have neither the money nor the truly astounding skill to pursue) and a class learning to draw on the computer with Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is probably my favorite computer program. I like it more than my word processor. I like it more than QuickTime. I like it more than my internet browser. There's something so wonderfully artistic and mathematical about the program that captures my imagination. It's what I create all those weird comics about me in. I liked the class, I liked the teacher, and something inside me said I could turn it into a way to make money without serving evil.

Okay, I've gone off topic and I'm leaving it all there. Anyhow...

I like school. The class I have on Tuesday and Thursday is called Digital Painting. We're using Correl Painter and it's hundreds of different brushes to create odd drawings. (On assignment was to use a brush that has the illusion of heavy paint strokes, think of van Gogh's paintings, using complementary tertiary colors using the strokes to create depth. I drew a blue-green t-shirt on a field of red-orange, then used a tool to pull the "paint" in such a way that it look like it's on fire. I like it more each time I look at it.) The teacher gives really boring lectures that feel more like art history than anything else, and I'm not looking forward to the obligatory self portrait, but the rest is fun. How can I be so sure? Today, class started at 2:45 and ten minutes later it was 4:45 and time to go. A good time was had by me.

Today was Thursday. I went to work and school. I'm here now and going to watch mediocre television and eat ginormous, frozen grapes.

You have a good night as well.