Woe Owe is me

I came very close, this afternoon, to walking out of the office, taking the train home, getting in my truck, driving to Los Angeles, and never coming back.

That is to say, I thought really hard about it.

My grandmother visited us last night, and because it was too late for her to drive home, she slept at our house. This morning she offered to drive me to the train on her way home.

And she proceeded to badger me about getting a masters degree. Or a law degree. Anything, because "a bachelor's means nothing nowadays."

For those of you without grandmothers, this isn't really the greatest lecture to kick off a typical public transit commute to a mind-numbing, creativity-stealing, free-time-eating job you hate but begrudgingly show up for day-after-day because it's the most practial way to make enough money to buy a house (someday) provide for a family (someday) and maybe, if you're careful, and only two of the kids need braces, and if they all go to state school, maybe, have enough money, or credit, left over to go back to school yourself and get a master's degree.

You could say I started the day off on the wrong foot. (You could probably also say something about using "off on" consecutively.)

I was a little upset... because I think she's right.

But what am I supposed to do? I owe more money on my car loan and oustanding student loans than I have in the bank; I can't save money for big important purchases (goodbye three bed, one-and-a-half bath, in a good school district) if I'm going into debt to finance a degree; and what the hell program am I supposed to register for anyway? What am I supposed to study!?

I hate what I do. I hate it. So I certainly don't want to pursue that! Goodbye MBA.

But without any other experience, how am I to know what else is out there, or how much I'd hate that?

What if I were fresh out of college? What if I hadn't jumped at gainful employment right after graduation? What would I do if I weren't burdened by these practical concerns? Why not major in that?

I'll tell you why: If I were just out of college, if I managed to convince myself to live in the moment and not work for some far-off dreamed-of payoff (in this case, the payoff is a monthly mortgage payment), if I really just wanted to be happy, and nothing else?

I'd scrape together six hundred bucks or so, buy some clunker I could trust to get me cross-country, drive to LA, or however far the car would take me, and then open up a t-shirt printing shop. The equipment's cheap if you get it used, like three thousand bucks. I could make that in a few months as a short order cook, or something.

But now, it doesn't make sense. If I'm to get a master's degree, I'm gonig to need to pay for it, which means keeping this job. Dropping fifteen grand a year to work in a different field I might hate anyway isn't a good bet.

So, woe is me. The life of a steady-income, car-owning, college graduate can be pretty tough. Almost as tough as making excuses when you know, when you know, your grandmother is right.

-t