Happy New Year's Eve!!! :-)

Happy New Year, everyone!!! I was going to write a big posting on my New Year's resolutions and where I hoped for my life would be headed in 2007, but I think I'll save that for tomorrow (or relatively soon if I don't make good on that, hehe). I just wanted to quickly wish everyone a very happy holiday. Please, everyone - have a happy, healthy, and safe New Year's. May 2007 be a banner year for you, your friends, family, and other loved ones. I am hoping it will be for me! All the best in 2007 and beyond!! :-)

xoxo,
Jesse :-)

So...I'm Like, A Lesbian...

Photo of Me, Taken 12.27.2006

So...my mom has been nagging me for weeks to get a haircut. She didn't like the shaggy look I was pulling off at all. Opinions have been sharply split - those that know me "in real life" seem to hate it (except for my cousin and younger sister's boyfriend), and those on the Internet seem to really like it. So, I just don't know. Anyway - my mom doesn't exactly know how to let a sleeping dog lie, or a bleeding horse die (oooh - rhymes!). Day after day, after day after day, it has been "go get a nice professional haircut!" I couldn't take it anymore, and I caved.

I thought since I haven't gotten a haircut in a long time, I would go to the salon in town. They usually do a nice job, but they are way, WAY overpriced. The salon at the mall usually does a great job and for $13 bucks. I won't even admit how much this haircut cost. It started out with the most simple of intentions - I asked the girl to cut it much shorter than it was, yet still long-ish on top...to its formerly spikey state. What I ended up with - ughhhhhhhh. It is what my older sister Meri refers to as "The Official Lesbian Cut". Its not quite a mullet, but its much shorter on top, and way, way, WAY longer than I have ever had it on the back/sides when the top was this short. Its winter, my scalp is dry, and my shorter hair is dried out (yet oily?!) and behaving like a little bitch. I hate it. I feel fugly. What kind of a "professional" look is this??

I think I'm going to go up to Boston to visit my older lesbian sister. We'll go hit up the "kittycat club" together. I love lesbians profusely, but I ain't one of em. At least I'll blend in now when at the local lesbian bar (well, there are no local ones - but you know what I'm saying). What self respecting gay man is going to pay attention to me like this? I'm going to pick up his lesbian fag hag instead!!! *SIGH* :-(

Goodbye - From the Library.

Here I sit in the library at my college in Manhattan for quite possibly the last time. My last class is at 8 p.m. and I just have to show up to hand in a final paper assignment, so I have some time to kill as my paper is done. Its 6:21 p.m EST right now as I sit and write this blog. The library here is normally bustling with students at this time (either researching something, typing up a last minute assignment, using the Internet at one of the computers, or whatever else they are being distracted with...), but right now it is eerily empty. In the direct section I'm sitting in there are 16 computer terminals - which would normally be full and have other students waiting to use them in the queue. However, right now there is another student, myself, and 14 empty computers. Its quite eerie. My feelings right at this moment are transcendent, almost out of body - I can't even describe it in words. I know I say that a lot, but I really can't describe this feeling in words. Eff it - I'll try anyway...

Its almost like that feeling you get when your cart is ever so slowly creeping up-up-up that old wooden rollercoaster. The conveyor belt is rickety and worn, and you hear the ever-so-slight movement of each piece of dried out or rotten wood creak as you move further up the hill. Then - that moment *just* when your motion changes from an ascension to a descension, that moment *right* when you are about to take the plunge, that real and true guttural moment right before/when gravity takes over and you feel your stomach drop out and you feel your body outside of itself for a split moment in time - THAT is what I feel like right now. Except instead of for a split moment in time, that feeling is prolonged. Someone let me off of this ride - I'm going to puke.

I have no idea why I feel this way, I just know that I do. I should feel accomplished and proud - and believe me I do. But I also feel lost and confused, and somewhat sad. For all the trials I've had in achieving my undergraduate degree, for as many forks in the road and I have taken and for all the strange places this journey has taken me on, for all the nights and years of being angry and sad at not having yet-finished, for all the high-highs and low-lows, for all of that and then some - I'm experiencing something that I really didn't see coming. I'm going to miss it.

That's right. I'm really going to miss it. And its hitting me harder now than it ever has before. Kind of like a sucker-punch out of nowhere. (Does that make sense? I know, I shouldn't try and use "sport-talk" lol). This journey has seen me at many different schools, attempting many different degrees, but there is something I have never seen before: the finish line. Now I'm virtually standing at it. It's not something I'm used to.

Like I said before - I should feel accomplished, and in one sense I do, but in another - not so much. Maybe its b/c I'm finishing in December instead of May - I don't get a formal graduation ceremony. Well - actually, I do. But I have to wait until May to "walk" with all the May graduates. Maybe its b/c I never really made any friends at this school (besides a casual classmate friend or a "hello" and a smiling face here and there). Maybe its because when I finished all my other final exams this semester I said to the teachers, "Have a nice break!" instead of "I'm graduating! Have a nice life - thank you for profoundly touching mine!" or something along those lines. Maybe its because I went to school thinking I would "find myself" professionally and after an Associate Degree and now a Bachelor Degree I still don't think I have. I still have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life, and I was hoping at the very least all these years of exploration would provide me with that.

But the sad reality is that I feel no closer to finding that today then before I ever took my first collegiate course starting at age 18. My G-D - how I so desperately wanted to find purpose/passion in school, and never quite did. It feels weird to be finishing without that. If I could walk away with that - maybe I would feel like I was carrying something with me. I mean I know this degree will somehow, someway help me in the longrun. I worked long and hard and no one can ever take this piece of paper away from me. That is something, right? If anything, it opens doors - which is certainly better than shutting them. But I have no idea where I go from here. No clue. What is smart? What is stupid? I know life is a "roll of the dice" - but I wanted to have a gut instinct a little stronger than a "crap shoot". I know that even though I'll wake up tomorrow a college graduate - things won't be all that different. I'm going to put in a water heater with my dad at someone's house. That's something I have been doing since I was 13 years old. Maybe it will be a while before I can feel/make a change. Maybe it will be right away. Maybe it will be a compromise between the two, I don't know.

In the end I am thankful I had this opportunity, thankful I saw it through (even though there were a lot of starts and stops along the way), thankful my family never gave up on me and pushed me to do this even when I didn't want to do it myself, and thankful that I will have this piece of paper for whatever life will throw at me next. I just can't see the full grasp or spectrum of it right now, and I guess that what is confusing me. No one has a crystal ball, why do I feel one to proceed? I guess because I don't like change and I don't trust my gut. My answer to a lot of life's big questions are "I don't know." That either makes me incredibly wise or incredibly stupid. How do I answer that? I don't know. (lol!). I just think I need a good long cry or something - but I don't know why. As much as I get bummed out from time-to-time or have suffered from depression in my life - I very, very rarely cry. Super rarely. Yet I feel like I need one tonight. Weird right? I am just feeling very raw right now. It must be in response to my ethereal nature right now, who knows. (Ok, I'm repeating myself, lol).

Goodbye, library. Goodbye, school. I know that tomorrow I gain something I have worked long and hard for, but I feel like I'm going to lose something instead. I'll miss you. I'll miss you very deeply. Goodbye.

-Jesse @ 7:05 p.m.

Wow...Last Full Day of Undergrad...Wow...

(LOL! I found this picture while searching the term 'homestretch' on images.google.com. I have no idea if this picture of a "Best of Breed or Variety" dog and a crazy lady is indicative of my academic success or future career success, but it was recommended to me by the Google g-ds so why not? Haha! :-) )

Wow.

"Wow" - its such a tiny three letter word that says almost nothing, and yet it says so much. I know I haven't made a post to this blog in almost a month, but I digress. Finishing up school has been one of the strangest events in my life and this past month has been harder and harder to both handle and grasp fully. I can't believe I'm done. I mean - I have a trip to my school's library for research purposes, two lengthy/important research papers to type, and a hell of a difficult final to study for before I am officially done with the semester a week from tonight, but I still just got home at 11:30 at night from my last full day of classes. Not my last full day of classes for the semester, but my last full day of classes in undergrad ever. I know its been a long time in the coming, and I have worked damn hard for it - but it still somehow managed to sneak up on me. I'm definitely experiencing feelings that I didn't think I would feel at this point in time.

I know that in terms of age, I should have been done with undergrad a long time ago. But in transfering between many schools and getting an Associate Degree along the way, I didn't take the most direct path. Still, somehow I managed to see it through and eventually get this all-important Bachelor Degree. I stuck it out when I wasn't even sure if it was right to continue on. I still don't know if it was, but it feels nice to be accomplishing something. If, growing up, you asked me if I would still be living at home at 25 and just finishing up school I would have though "no way" - but we can't always predict where life is going to take us. Still, I'm extremely thankful for the time I've had here and proud of what I have accomplished. I just don't know what's next. I was SURE that I would know by the time I was finishing up undergrad that I would know what my career "purpose/passion" would be. I was sure that I would know where I was heading next. I was sure that I'd be confident in my newly acquired academic abilities. Yet, like some ancient Greek philosopher, all I know is what I don't know. And its a heck of a lot.

There were times I wanted to kick, scream, and cry (and in fact did) over not being finished with undergrad. I just wanted to be done with it all. And now I almost am. Its surreal. Its been many years in the making. There have been challenges and roadblocks along the way, but there have been victories too. I can't really view this degree as one point in time, rather its the journey I've had over the past few years. And its all culminating in a week. Nothing is more surreal than that.

After a full day and night of school (my last here), I am very tired and kind of emotionally drained after the significance of this day - so I'll make this blog short (for me, heh). I'll definitey try and wax nostalgic on this experience more soon, but I just feel so strange right now. I ended up not being sure if going to the school I'm finishing up at was right to me, to being miserable there, to end up really liking it in the end. Life is strange like that. Did I just grow accustomed to it, or did I truly grow to like it? I'd say a little of both. In the end, if I have any regrets - they are more about my acts of ommission rather than my acts of commission. I regret not speaking up in certain classes more (if at all), I regret not making more friends in school, and I regret not getting more involved. But, I guess I can always chalk it up to experience and hopefully put the application of that knowledge to good use the next time I'm in a communal setting (or any setting where there is social/academic/career opportunities for that matter, I guess). I had a lot on my mind this semester in particular, and let myself get distracted by that. I won't be getting all A's this semester like I have in previous semester's, but hopefully my lowest grades will be one or two B's. We'll see. I'm still proud of all the work I have done, and like I said - to actually be accomplishing this degree is the weirdest thing ever. I'm much more sad than I thought I would be. I'm sad for ending this one chapter of my life, and kind of scared of the unknown as to what is next. I know I should be "excited", but part of me feels like it is dying inside at the same time. Growing up isn't as fun as it appeared to be as a kid. Not to say that I don't fully plan on finding some of that proverbial fun! Its just...confusing.

There are no moral absolutes in the world (ok, there are plenty, but not in the hypothetical situations I'm talking about), and I feel like I'm staring at multiple paths in the road and completely unsure of which roads to take. Choices have repercussions, and its those repercussions that you can't possibly see until they smack you in the face that have me scared. But - that's just life, right? I don't know where this journey will take me, but I hope that no matter what "I'll be okay."

Well, I'm going to bed now...with a lot in front of me between now and a week from tonight. But, I have finished the first leg of my task and completed my last full day of classes today/tonight. Its sad, its scary, its exciting - its all those and then some, all rolled into one. I go to sleep tonight not-yet a college graduate...but I'm damn close. I'm almost there...