Excitement!.... and then reality.

As of the previous post, I was a few days away from commencement and I was all excited about actually living life outside of school. I had quite a shock the day before commencement when I discovered that certain UCSC databases which I assumed were linked to each other - namely the ones that contain records of who is graduating and who is living in the Stevenson apartments - were very un-linked, resulting in me unwittingly violating my housing contract, which had expired the day before. Logically, when I turn in forms stating that I'll be participating in the Stevenson graduation ceremony on June 17th, the database that holds that record should be referenced with the database of housing contracts and the result should be an automatic two-day extension of the housing contract. Apparently Stevenson isn't quite that advanced yet; ALL persons who wish to stay after the contract expires must file an extension form with the housing office or be fined $100 per day. I didn't, and my R.A. saw me and told me that I was in violation and that I should try and talk to the housing people, who weren't working that weekend, and see if I could beg them into cutting me some slack. I sent an email to Juanita, the woman at the housing office who deals with these issues, and then I packed everything up and got the hell out. Sylvia's mom was conveniently in town with her truck, and everything just fit. In the following week, I emailed back and forth with Juanita, who never actually told me I was being fined, just that they had every right to fine me, and that they had every right to enter my room once the contract had expired. The caveat, though, and the reason why I may have gotten away without a fine, is that my apartment-mates DID get extensions. (They weren't graduating; they were just helping out with the graduation, and so I assumed that they needed extensions and didn't think anything of it.) Now, the apartment only has one front door (all the rooms are inside), and R.A.s can't just barge into your living room if you're legitimately living there because it's an invasion of privacy. So what I'm hoping is that no one was actually able to check if I'd left my room, and that therefore there was no evidence other than my pleas for help that I'd violated my contract. And those fuckers already have $100+ from me in unused meals (which they don't refund), so hopefully they'll just fuck off and leave me alone.

Whoo, tangent. Right, so I graduated, and my family and some good friends came and it was really lovely and the announcer screwed up my name but that was okay and we took pictures and loaded up the snake cage and ate an expensive graduation dinner and I wore my velvet blazer and I'd just gotten a snazzy new haircut and I was feeling great and then I drove home with my friends and we hung out and it was really nice. It was a great end to my UCSC career. I was genuinely excited for life despite dealing with Juanita. My internship at Kenwood was about to start, and my dad's friend Jim had spoken of drafting and I.T. work for me, so I figured I was pretty set - Jim Monday through Wednesday and Kenwood Thursday and Friday. Then I had this Great Idea.

I remembered how back in elementary school, my mom would take me shopping for new clothes and new binders and paper and pens right before a new school year started. It was this lovely ritual that made me feel more confident and prepared for the next grade. Why not an equivalent preparation for life? So I prepared. I bought new socks, new underwear, 72 protein bars, a gym membership, clothes hangers, towels, a hands-free cellphone headset, a free-standing adjustable garment rack, a hanging sweater organizer, and a 5-tier wire shelving unit. Then I began the formiddable process of organizing my disaster of a room. It took many hours and I'm still not entirely satisfied, but it's adequate. And the shelves are so nice!

Today I threw away a bunch of old crap and cleaned up the basement and mowed the lawn and brought my mom some chairs and worked out. I felt very productive. Then tonight happened, and my excitement sobered into mild anxiety. See, I had already been spending money at quite a rate back in college - eating out, buying clothes, having fun. Lots of eating out - sometimes twice in one day. Bad Owen. The Great Idea cost a lot as well, but I figured I'd be able to handle it once I started working. Well, I haven't actually made any money yet. Jim called me back today, and he's still uncertain as to the details of the work, so I have to wait a week or two. In the meantime, I have $847 in my account, and a $676 credit card bill due next month. Then my dad called a family meeting where we all agreed to take on tasks to make the household run better. That felt good. THEN came the part that made me anxious: as of August 1st, I will have to come up with $1,000 per month and hand it over to my dad. This sounds bad, and having to come up with money makes me frown, but logically it's a sound plan. $300 will go to my IRA account; if I save $3500 per year for forty years, I will likely end up with several million dollars by the time I'm 65. $100 will go to paying back my parents for funding my last two quarters of college. $200 will go to gas, and the last $400 will go to my parents for room and board. If you think about it, that's actually a pretty sweet deal - the equivalent of a studio in west Marin for $400 a month, plus having pressure to save for retirement now while it's really crucial. My only problem is that I don't have a job that pays.

I've been worrying about getting a job. I've never worked in retail, and I've always felt sorry for those who do. I've pretty much either been handed construction work by my dad or found I.T. work through people I know. I'm desperately hoping that I don't have to go out and apply for crappy minimum-wage jobs like Borders Books & Music or Safeway. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Film and Digital Media!

I also need to curb my rampant spending. I calculated a bit, and I found that in order to make $1,000/mo, one needs to make $250/wk. I figured that I'd want some spending money, so I shot for $1,200, which works out to $300/wk, which works out to $7.50/hr. Keep in mind that this isn't accounting for tax, which will probably be about 25-30%, so I'd really need to earn about $9.50 an hour. Then I realized that I have spent about two thousand dollars in the past two months on STUFF. Mostly on FOOD. I could have saved SO MUCH money if I'd just eaten at the dining hall all the time. Of course, I would have gotten more sick of the dining hall food than I already was, and I would have missed hanging out with my dear friends. But still... fuck, that's a lot of money. I guess when you're in that comforting womb of parent-supported University life, you don't think about saving money. After all, the college years are the time to LIVE with reckless abandon. I don't horribly regret living my money away because I had a great time spending it, but now I have to deal with the consequences of the high life.

You know what would be really nice? It would be really, really nice if Kenwood hired me as a full-time assistant editor when Courtney, a former intern who currently holds that title, quits in a week or so. That would be simply fantastic. That would make be excited about the whole life thing again.

I'll ask when I go in on Thursday.