In Which: Nothing Matters Sluts

I'm doing this really 100 dollar idea where I'm planning to quit my job in two weeks even though I have no other job lined up and my shiny new graduate degree from a Good School has proved about as useful and applicable in today's tough economic climate as an N.E.W.T in Herbology.

There are a lot of reasons why I chose to do this and most of them are "stupid." Admittedly my career as a coffeeslave was not particularly edifying, and my barely-over-minimum-wage paycheck hardly stuffed anything at all into the gibbering maw of my post-graduate poverty. But honestly, as stressful and degrading as my job was on occasion, I really liked a lot of things about it. Here's another thing: I am--was---good at it. Today, for example, I made a mocha entirely with my left hand while I steamed milk for a latte with my right. That doesn't sound as impressive in type as it was in real life, but you should have heard the compliments my coworker and bro Frankie heaped on me.

(....No, I'm serious, that's super hard! It's a big deal that I know how to do it! Can you pour steamed milk into latte art one-handed at all, let alone when you're balancing a pitcher of 140 degree milk into a wand blasting hot steam with the other?)

At any rate, my full-immersion approach to the job search is necessary because of my crippling mental problems. I don't perform well unless I'm backed into a corner like a feral, desperate animal. I'm a last minute kind of goon. If I didn't force myself into a situation where I had to find something else, I would work at that coffeeshop forever, because it's easy, and part of me likes it, and eventually you don't feel cold anymore, you just fall asleep.


Something I realized tonight as I began to sob-laugh embarrassingly in front of my husband was that I've had a job since I was 17. Other than a period of weeks for a winterbreak, I've never been unemployed in my adult life. For long periods in college, I even worked two jobs and went to school full time (and still had time to fit Star Wars fanfiction into my life!) I love chugging on, making it work. I get crazy and depressed when I'm just sitting around. But something's wrong now. I need to push forward into something else; I've hit some kind of minimum-wage settling threshold.

So excelsior! I guess. Nothing bad can happen.


In this picture I am posed with Elfvis, a weird guy, and Renn, my wonderful coworker . Look at how my eyes are closed: deliriously.