Resurrected

I'm back. I've been meaning to update my blog, but never feel like I have anything interesting to say. So I guess I'll just update you a little on what's going on.

This summer has been alright. I was laid off from my temporary position at the end of June and have been unemployed ever since. The little bit of extra money and the enormous amount of time off left me with a lot of free time to do fun things like:

• Attend three weddings. One in Maryland, on in Paw Paw, and of course, Erin and Jason's in Kalamazoo.
• Visit home and my home friends.
• Spend the only two nice weeks of summer on Lake Saint Clair.
  
• Go to Lollapalozza, which is next weekend.
  
• Watch a ridiculous amount of tv shows on DVD.
• Organize and de-clutter my life.
• Enjoy cheap events that happen only on weekdays (i.e. tiger's games, boomba, free bowling, golf)
• Hang out with my friends here who I may only have a little more time to see on a regular basis.
  

However, more of my free time was spent stressing out about the future and being depressed with the current economy. So much so that I've completely moved on from freaking about affording my student loans, and now I am freaking out about how I'm going to afford to live.

I feel incredibly conflicted. Part of my feels depressed because I have no real direction and I feel stagnant in my current situation. A couple days ago I relieved myself from this feeling by saying that if I have no job prospect by the end of August, then I'm packing my car full of stuff and driving out to Colorado to live with Jess while I try to find a job (doing anything!) out there. Luckily, Jess is one of the nicest people in the world and actually seemed excited about this idea.

However, at the same time, thinking about leaving Detroit, and Michigan all together, is scary and makes me sad. Michigan is my home. It is one of my great loves. The thought of leaving my friends and my family for an undetermined amount of time makes me feel sad and childish. They are the only things tying me here, and really the only reason I decided to stay in Detroit for the summer. I really care about these people. I'm comfortable here. Do I really want to leave my comfort zone when I'm this down about life?

But at the same time, it almost seems necessary to leave. Metro Detroit is depressing. Trying to find a job serving food out here has even failed me. I could move home with my mom to "save money", but really that would only be useful if I could find a job around there too. I love the Kalamazoo area and I wouldn't hate living there in the Fall.

See? Conflict.
I don't really know what I'm going to do for sure. All that is certain is that I'm moving out of Detroit before September 1st. After that? We'll see...

Sore butt

Now that I have a job, it's hard to find time to update! I spend all day on the computer, so when I come home, the last thing I want to do is stare at the computer again. It's nice having a job though.

If everything goes according to plan, I'll work for this company for most of the summer and save up enough money to move out west in the fall. Then of course I'll get an awesome job in my field and start making enough money to live and pay off my loans.

However, nothing goes according to plans, so I'm trying not to make that many. I do want to move away at the end of summer/beginning of fall. I would like to move to Colorado. I'm going to apply for as many jobs in my field as possible. I'm going to try and make the best of these crazy times.

HOWEVER, I've been toying with the idea of going back to school and becoming a college professor. And not in the field of Psychology. I've been doing research on scholarly fields that I could see myself wanting to study/teach for a super long time. But that wouldn't be for a couple years.

I graduated last weekend, and so did my sister! The whole weekend was full of accomplishments, great food, and one crazy night out in Royal Oak (even though I may have been the craziest). I was just so happy to go out with everyone from my program.

Lately I've been grateful for:

• Friends and Family.
  
• My graduate cohort, who, without them, I don't know how I would have made it through the past two years.
• Textbook prices on Amazon when you're studying for fun and can buy the outdated versions.
• Fun events with matching shirts or a silly game made out of chairs or a celebrating a national holiday that doesn't involve your country.

I'm participating in the Zoo-de-Mack this weekend. A 50 mile bike ride from Boyne Highlands to Mackinaw Island. There will be tons of people, good food, good music, and a sweet bar crawl on the island. It's a bicycle festival extraordinaire. Sean, Sean and Anthony from Maryland are going to be there! I haven't seen them in years!

However, I went for a 6 mile bike ride last night and wanted to die. My croch/butt/sitting muscles are soooo sore. 50 miles is going to be hard!!

Sorry 'bout that

Hi guys. Long time no post. Sorry about that.

Life has been busy! In the midst of finishing school, my internship and my assistantship, I was offered a temporary position at a company that does Background Checks on people, mostly for employment purposes. It was brought on by a going away party for my old boss Sally. Andrea and I were offered the job as long as we could start the following morning, which we took.

The project was only supposed to be a couple weeks, but last Friday my boss decided to keep me on another week to help wrap everything up. Now he's keeping me on an extra few weeks to help some more. Now there's a potential that this may turn into a real job. It's been a crazy couple of days, really.

I like the idea of having income. I like the idea of not having to job search for another year with no avail. I like the idea that this all came about because I went to a going away party.

However, I've been toying with the idea of going back to school. I like school. I like studying, learning, and being around the college atmosphere. Maybe I'll become a professor? What's another few years of school when I like it? Either way, I'm going to give myself a year or so to think about it. I want to take some time for learning without having to pay for tuition.

Speaking of school. I'm done. And I'm a little sad about it. Not so much about not having to go to UDM anymore, and not so much about not having to work for Kathleen, but sooo much about not being forced to see my classmates anymore. I know we'll see each other anyway, but it's much harder to keep in touch when you really have to try.

I'll try to update more for those who actually read this!

PostSecret

Found this new hip thang while stalking on Facebook. I thought it was stupid at first. Now I don't think it's all that bad. http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

Busy Busy

I forgot what being busy felt like! It's a little exhausting and makes time go by way to fast. But it's nice at the same time.

For those that don't know, I got offered a temp job at a company that does background checks and drug testing for employment purposes. It's pretty much exactly what I was doing last summer at RECON. Never did I ever think my background investigation experience was going to land me a job, but it did. And it pays pretty well, so it's very nice.

I'm hoping it will maybe turn in to a summer job! We'll see!

So now, for the next two weeks, I have to:

• Finish my finals, including my ever so daunting comprehensive exam that proves I've learned something over the past two years.
• Finish my internship.
  
• Finish my assistantship.
• Finish my classes and final presentations.
• Work for this company for as many hours as I possibly can!

After April 21st though, I'm going to have nothing besides my new job. Life is going to be so easy!

Except I'm sure my assistantship duties will continue all the way up to graduation because that's exactly how Kathleen rolls.

24

My birthday weekend is over. I knew that once it was it meant that I was destined to spend the following two weeks locked in my room finishing up school work, finishing up my internship, finishing up my assistantship, and finishing up my life as a student.

Actually, since the economy has knocked me off my feet and ruined my moral, I'm almost tempted to go back for my doctorate. So maybe I will be a student again some day? It sounds better than not having a job.

My birthday weekend was GREAT! Actually I should probably call it my birthday week since I partied from Thursday all the way to Tuesday morning.

During my birthday week I:

• Received many birthday wishes that left me feeling super special and lucky.
• Was surprised with the best birthday ice cream cake ever from Laura.
  
• Had a movie night with Dan and Melissa, drinking wine and eating the ice cream cake.
• Went rollerblading with Tonka because the weather was so nice.
• Had my first grill out of the season, and made about 10lbs of mashed potatoes to go with it.
• Drank my first Oberon of the season. Grilling and Oberon? I like this season a lot.
  
• Got slapped in the face with reality. A couple of times. Naivety can only last so long.
  
• Played Apples to Apples, Battle of the Sexes and Cranium with some of my favorites.
• Went to this really cool bar in underground Royal Oak that Brian knew about, where apparently the men dancing around us were "together" and we didn't even notice it. Well, at least I didn't notice it.
  
• Got sucked into watching Little Big League on ABCFamily and left for Paw Paw a few hours late.
• Had a bonfire in Paw Paw with most of my favorite Paw Paw people! Thanks so much to all those who came back from Chicago to celebrate with me!
• Reconciled with Dave after over two years of us both being stupid and petty.
• Started putting words into practice by trying to get over myself in a lot of other situations that I may be being petty in. I'm lucky I have friendship and I shouldn't think that I'm entitled to people's attention. As a friend I should learn to be open minded and graciously accept things that I cannot, and probably should not, change.
  
• Got my groove back.
• Spent the night at my house with Katie who was a funny mess and I loved it.
• Had an awesome breakfast at Ryan's.
• Cleaned up the beer cans and toilet paper left on the field from the night before.
• Drove home and did nothing productive. Actually, I did nothing productive alllll weekend.
• Worked with Kim on Monday but left an hour early like usual.
• Took Katie's demo to Brian so he could listen to the songs we would like him to try out on drums.
• Hopped on board a fun bus and went to Harsens Island with Melissa, Raimie and Andy to watch the Final Four and hang out with their friends.
• Picked up someone from jail in New Baltimore.
• Was sad MSU lost because now I have to drive to North Carolina and buy my friend Brandon a pint. And because I hate losing bets.
  
• Got pretty hammered and stayed up too late; only slept 3 hours but it was well worth it in fun-ness.
• Spent the night at a house over looking the Saint Clair River channel watching ginormous freighters drive by.
• Was in a strange no sleep world for most of Tuesday, hardly able to survive class.

And now it's Wednesday and I'm writing this blog and listening to Bon Iver instead of doing my work. I'm such a mess.

So far 24 has been a really fun age. I hope it continues this way!

LiveJournal

I always wanted to write a book about London. Part of me would want to write it exactly like it happened because it would be fun to look back on in the future. The other part of me would like to change a few things to make it more interesting and fun to read. Either way, I think it would make a good story.

During my study abroad in London I was always updating my LiveJournal with the current events. So if I did decide to write a story, London would be fairly easy to recollect with all the updates and all the pictures I took while I was there. Tonight I thought it would be fun to read about it all over again.

So I started reading the life of Merry, August 2005. I didn't even make it to the London entries because I kept repeating something in my journal that I couldn't remember where it came from. Being the average, jaded, vain and naive 20-year-old that I was, I was very cryptic in my LiveJournal entries. Just like every other LJer was doing at that time, I wanted to tell everyone what was going on in my life, but not tell them anything at all.

This is disappointing, because now, 4 years later, I'm reading these stories and going, "Who am I referring to?" "Who did I have a crush on then" "What happened that night?" and "Who are all these people I swore I would 'never forget'?"

This has happened to me before. A couple years ago, Ramsey and I looked over our notebooks we used to have in middle school that we used for passing notes. There was one entry from after New Years Fest that talked about how much fun we had meeting so and so (cute boys) and how we would never forget so and so's names for the rest of our lives. (right)

We always thought we were above middle school, not as naive and silly as all the others... which we were. We always thought we were so above high school too, so grown up and so smart... which we weren't. Life is funny like that.

Anyway, in my posts from August 2005 I kept talking about some revelation I had in the Spring, only to find out that I never posted my revelation when it occurred.


Things I learned about Merry, pre-London:

• It took me 9 months to move on from Brian Reidenbach, maybe more. When I look back at that break-up now, I think of it like it hardly affected me. I guess I'm just good at voiding pain from my memories.
• Merry 2005 knew how to be single. Merry 2009 does not.
  
• That was one of the last summers my Paw Paw group was together. Most people came home from college for the summer and many fun Paw Paw nights were had.
• I had a really good college experience. Hope (and Holland) was a great place to live and learn for three years.