confession 2

before everyone gets all hot and bothered about my confessions, there's one thing you should know -- my existence is stereotypically white, heterosexual, and lower middle class. i have many confessions, and none of them are about drugs, sex, or anything particularly exciting. if i did something worthy of confessing in the drugs/sex/excitement category, i wouldn't post about it because i would have dropped dead from surprising myself. just so you know.

anyway. so, i got back from my vacation to find an envelope from ubc in my mailbox. it was a letter informing me that i have been accepted to the faculty of law at ubc. yippee. notice my total lack of passion about something i should be passionate about. i have two weeks to tell them that i won't be accepting their offer. why would someone apply to law school and then refuse acceptance, you might ask? well, not just for shits and giggles, though that was certainly part of it. when i came up with the idea of applying to law school, i was all gung ho about it. i am interested in the law, i have connections in the legal community in BC thanks to my current position, i want to have a career instead of just having a job, and i miss being in school. also, at the time, i saw law school as the perfect compromise between my desire to continue my education and chris's desire not to get the heck out of dodge (seeing as how i have already done my master's at ubc, the thought of doing a phd there when i know how shitty the system is isn't too appealing).

however, i have since considered the drawbacks and asked myself what i really want from my life. let us first consider the drawbacks of law school and a career in law: sixty hour work weeks for the first five years, snotty assholes just doing it for the money, rigidity, moral ambiguity, MORE student loan debt, and the hour and a half commute (one way) from our home to ubc for three years. now, let us consider what i want from life: time to spend cuddling and talking (and let's face it, screwing) with my partner; time to visit my aging grandparents in texas; time to spend in one of my favorite cities, austin, with my friends; enough money to buy or build a comfortable and homey home; and enough energy to enjoy all the great experiences of life that i overlook in the pursuit of grueling work and social schedules. oh, and i think i want to write a book. so what to do, what to do? well, working a sixty hour week would make it pretty hard to get in all that quality cuddling, talking, and screwing (not in order of importance, by the way). nor do i think underling lawyers at big firms get a lot of vacation time, especially since every pay check counts when trying to get rid of student loan debt. in other words, i think that a career in law is for the most part (though not totally of course, wouldn't want to be deterministic here) incommensurate with my.... well, with my heart's desire.

by now it's pretty obvious that my confession #2 is that i am not going to law school (at least not this year... maybe i will change my mind after i watch more of my friends and coworkers get on with their lives). what do you think? am i a moron? am i on my way to being a fat, middle aged, prematurely gray and prematurely wrinkled (from the fat) waitress at denny's (or whatever. insert your own local nightmarish 24 hour diner here) with bad lipstick and even uglier hygiene habits? sigh. i think so.

travel log

i didn't really keep a log. why would i?

i had a nice trip. the bed and breakfast we stayed in had a very comfy bed and a very tasty breakfast and a breaktaking view of the water and vancouver island in the distance. perhaps it is for that reason that we stayed in for 60 of the 72 hours we were on the sunshine coast, enjoying the view and each other. on monday, we emerged from our room and went on a 10 kilometer hike through the freaking wilderness. my legs are sore. i need to buy some suitable hiking footwear. at any rate, it was a good vacation, thoroughly relaxing. i think i need to do this exact vacation about once a month.

you see now why i don't keep a travel log? it would suck, much like this post. but i had to post about my holiday, right?

holiday

tomorrow i am leaving town for a quick little four day vacation with my sweetie. i am very much looking forward to the time away, with no chores to do, no errands to run, no obligations to uphold, and nothing but time to spend with my favorite person in the world. (given the nature of my mostly self-involved posts, i feel the need to let you know that my favorite person in the world is not me, but rather my loving, compassionate, and furry partner chris).

however, the anticipation that i feel thinking about our trip is tinged with something not-so-anticipatory. i think it is dread. a nagging voice in my head reminds me that holidays are just little escapes from the drudgery and sameness of every day life, a way to recharge one's batteries so that they can be sucked dry yet again by working, commuting, small talking, whatever, upon one's return to reality. the really insidious thing about vacations is that you feel so damn good after one of them that you lose the will to change your crappy job, or leave your cheating spouse, or make that important leap in your life that will remove whatever monkey is clinging to your back and slowly leeching out your soul. holidays are like those flashing memory erasers from men in black -- one push of a button and you've forgotten that you've seen an alien in your mirror.

why do we need to get away from our lives? are our lives really ours if we constantly seek ways to escape from them? how much of our lives are made up of merely a series of implicit consents rather than conscious choices? all the time we consent to bills, to mortgages, to restraint, to retirement funds, to lazy coworkers, to hateful in-laws, to not letting ourselves experience happiness and joy as often as we can.

rainbow always used to say 'don't let anyone steal your joy' and i realized with a start the other day that i had let someone steal my joy and it was me. i plan to use this holiday as an opportunity to take back my joy. i plan to bring it back with me, tucked safe inside a little box in my head. i plan to share my joy with chris, every day. i plan to take it out and turn it over in my hands when i am overwhelmed by choices and paths until it provides me with a map of where i want to go.

confession 1

i am at work. but i am not working. lately, i sit at my desk and work hard at avoiding my work. i search for obsure web pages about creative writing, foucauldian theory, soon-to-be-published books by favorite authors, graduate programs in politics, and miscellanea. i sit with scrunched up eyes, trying to push out some story idea or character for the novel i want to write. (writing a novel is something that people who don't want real jobs aspire to do, which often results in the kind of shit that populates the shelves of my local chapters bookseller.) i wonder if i should quit my job and try to get a new one. am i selfishly (i keep the job for fear of being unpaid, for fear of finding something worse -- the job is not bad, it is not hard, it suits my schedule and my routine, and i have good friends here) holding on to a position that is teaching me nothing new, that i neglect from sheer boredom of the work? should i let the work go to someone who could and wants to do a better job? probably. but will i? probably not. after all, what if my next job (assuming i get one -- my degrees are in political science and history, for goddess's sake) doesn't allow me the time and flexibility to write emails to friends in different countries, jot down thoughts on my blog, or surf the net for another reason to ridicule george bush? what could be wrong with that?

who is rainbow johnson?

rainbow johnson was one of my father's names, the one under which he played ball, picked up women, and generally enjoyed life. he called rainbow his alter ego, but rainbow was exactly like wayne and vice versa as far as i could tell. wayne and rainbow came up with some pretty good shit together, including life lessons drawn from the simpsons, awful one-liners, and tips on how to live rather than just exist. i named this blog after him because i like the name and i need to recognize all that it implies.

he always used to say that everything happens for a reason. i wonder if he's right.