Grumbleshanks

People let themselves go in different ways. I feel, in the two years I've been out of college, I've given up on my mind. I've worked in food service since the day I threw my cap into the air with a thousand other brand new baby graduates. The hang over I experienced on that day was the precursor to the next 24 months of debauchery, sex, lies, intrigue and alcohol. And the beginning of the careful disintegration of the very thing I worked so hard to build through all of those classes. The old mind canal. 

Leaving the academic womb thrusts you into this world, so wide open it leaves you more than dumbfounded. For those lucky few who had a plan, an internship, a grad school appy in the works, the transition was perhaps less threatening, less cold. I'm not blaming anyone but myself for this absent stepping stone. I could absolutely have taken on some internships, gotten some 'real' work experience. Let's just be honest with each other. I think honestly is important (unless there's a chance that it could get me into some very real trouble, in which case the 'fraidy cat in me would lie every time). I wasn't ready to grow up.

But I'm realizing that waitressing and bartending are actually difficult jobs to survive on, and at 50 hours of brain flattening service a week for two years, I've become a bitch. I'm bitter, I think my customers are the stupidest people alive (okay okay, not ALL of them...only about 68-74%) and my new management team may as well be wearing tutus and rainbow suspenders for how seriously I'm about to take them. It's bad. I'm afraid I've traded my mind for a series of hilariously delightful stories, most including some kind of alcohol and some kind of 'antic' or 'situation'. I turn 24 on Monday, and while I'm sure karaoke with 15 of my closest friends will be amazing, there's a part of me that wishes I just had too much very important work to do.