Feeling: anxious
Listening to: Evanescence - Whisper
Reading/Watching: Good Will Hunting

I think this year needed to happen.

I paid my rent by pulling money from my savings account (again; my lovely large honorarium from the synagogue is officially gone), since the paycheck from the orthodox church is seriously tardy. I find myself looking at my bank balance and wondering how I manage to spend it every single time, because invariably, when I try to put $50 or $100 more into savings, it gets yanked right back out again to cover electricity, or gas, or food.

This year is two months from being over, and it's already on the record books for Most Stressful of Katie's post-highschool life. A large portion of that has been because of the scraping and money shuffling and that now-familiar, squeezed feeling when I use my debit card at the gas pump and pray, pray that it doesn't come out of my account for a couple days, so that I can give that voice lesson tomorrow and deposit it quick like a bunny, and no one will ever know.

I have never officially spent more than I was capable of paying. I borrowed money from mon coeur for a grand total of two days before I paid it back. In that way I am lucky, because I am capable of living within my means and not being sucked in by the "cutest little sale in Bath & Body Works" like some of my friends. I don't spend my money on *things* most of the time, I spend my money on my life, on my momentum. It's gas, food, and bills, and when I am feeling particularly wealthy, there'll be a movie ticket, a dinner out, or the knee-high brown suede boots I craved for two months before finally caving and buying them with my synagogue paycheck.

But I still hate it. I hate not knowing when I'll be working next week. I hate having 3-4 jobs and barely paying rent each month. I hate when a student calls and cancels at the last minute, and I say, "Well great. Now what do I do about groceries?" I have the strongest urge to run away, to just take off for a different city and try my luck elsewhere, because it has become clear that Schoolville has very little to offer me. It does not want me.

This time last year, I was panicked, wondering what I was going to do with myself, how I could bear to leave my beloved town and all the wonderful people in it. I decided to stay here and live in the "real world," rather than go to graduate school immediately, so that I could enjoy my town a little longer, and not miss it so desperately.

Well now, I don't miss it. I want to go to school so badly, it makes my lungs hurt. I want professors, and papers, and student loans, and I want to learn something every day. I don't want a nice humdrum office job (well, I want a steady paycheck, but anyway), I want to continue. I'm not finished yet. I have not arrived.

It takes a year like this to make me realize that it wasn't the town that I loved, it was the life. The life I loved is gone. It roams penniless and talks about "someday"s, and I won't find it again until I continue on the path I started five years ago. I needed this year to make me want it this badly.

Okay, I've learned my lesson. Can we fast-forward now? I want to see 2006, I want to see September, with a brief layover in April.

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