Hospital Visit
I had to start the day with a wake-up call from the hospital -- a friend's appendix had burst, and she had just gotten surgery. A mere appendicitis would have been a simple and mundane procedure, but alas, she had waited too long, and the organ had perforated by the time she had gone to the hospital, and now it has complicated the procedure. She looked very grim, but seem to be facing it all with much bravery. Hasn't eaten for days, and her body looked so frail and small -- not too unlike Paris Hilton's bony body. She may get to leave the hospital today -- either way, I will be seeing her again tonight. She is my best friend's younger sister, so to me, she is like my own sister, although we don't keep in touch often, we know what's going on. I'd like to think that I'm her surrogate older sister (since her own sister is living in Iowa, approx. 2000 miles away), but alas, I do so little. But it is times like these, that I really have to pull a muscle or two and play catch up.
On other minor news, my work-week has started very ordinarily otherwise. I had to take care of some advertising issues, and this is my first time doing this co-op thing. So every end of the month, I will be invoicing, and every beginning, advertising. I can see very little blogging in the last/first week of every month.
On comparing myself with my peers:
It's hard. It's really hard, when aforementioned current patient friend of mine is three years younger (I used to tutor her in math, I recall -- geometry, I think, since that was my specialty back then) and she will be graduating from UCSD next year. I will be graduating from a 2 year educational institution (not too unlike a mental institution, actually) this winter (not like that's an accomplishment) but still I won't be anywhere close to my nearest proximal goal. My bestest friend is also on a rather detour route to her goal, so she's kind of late in getting her pharmacy degree, which helps a little, since I know I'm not the only one in the trenches, but makes me fear a little more, since she will be a doctor of pharmacy before the turn of the decade, and I will probably still be waiting for that goddamned lottery for the nursing department.
While the fact that I am not on the traditional fast track to a BA/BS, Masters, Ph.D. or whatever acronym I may want to pursue does add on to my current state of frustration, it is not just my peers zooming by that disturbs me.
Take for example, my biggest rival (at least from my point of view) in high school. We'll call her S. S just came to the US during Jr High school. She's a year older than I am, but lowered her grade a year (which many immigrants do to buy time before getting popped out of High school -- to extend the amount of time to acquire the English language). Despite the fact that her English was broken, she was loved by all the teachers immediately. She was perfect. Quiet and reserved, but once she said something, it was just perfect -- not a vowel out of place.
At first, the competition was really friendly. We'd take turns getting the highest scores, and even help each other on various projects -- she'd usually help me out in algebra, and I would help her out in the more English oriented classes, like history or English. Then somewhere along the line, I soured. She didn't, but I did. I started to hold a grudge, because I was jealous, although I didn't admit it at the time. I wanted to be best, but with her around, that meant I had to work harder. I also knew her secret too; I was smart, and quick to be inspired. She was a perfectionist who had endurance and persistance on her side. But when something like AP Physics hit me like a brick wall, I found myself sinking deeper in a quicksand of misery I, myself, had produced.
Then things turned very grave. We were no longer friends, and my grudge stood in place. It was worse when I was denied admissions to Berkeley, my dream school, and she got accepted to Yale (I'd like to think that my dream school at the time was better than any Ivy League school -- but then their rejection soured me too). Then she said one thing that screwed me over and made my high school academic career the biggest sham.
I believe it was in some school paper interview -- she said that she doesn't compete with anyone, except her own self. I was blown away. Who knows if that's actually true or not, but that concept of striving to be better by being better than the person I was an hour ago, yesterday, or last year, was something I never conjured up in my own head. She was mature. I was not.
So that brings me back to my originally point of trying to understand my frustration by projecting it onto my blog and dissecting it. Have I digressed too much?
Since then, I've stopped competing with everyone else. Or at least I've tried. Only about 20-25% of my frustration is caused by my peers' advancement (and the image of myself breathing their dust, dumbfounded). The rest is because I am competing with myself (see, I am capable of learning, and put jealousy aside). I want to advance forward and move, whether it's slower or faster or in a skewed direction than anyone else. I want to say that I had a better day than I did yesterday (not because it was a day off from work, or because it was sunny versus cloudy, but because of how I spent the day). I want to say that I'm in a better place than I had been in last year. I want to say that since I finished high school, there has been improvement in my life.
Tomorrow might be a bad day. I may be lazy and not try to spend time wisely. But on the average, there should be an upward trend! Maintaining the status quo is not something I'm interested in; it may be the thing for other people, but not me. A graduate degree isn't going to get me the satisfaction I seek. It's more of a zen Buddhist crap thing -- it comes from within. Rather than have a crappy, run of the mill diploma, or a nursing license, or a green card, I have to be satisfied -- I have to be proud that I have taken the steps necessary to get where I am, and that I have worked hard, and that my life is going uphill and if you extrapolate it, it is a constant upward trend.
In that aspect, I am very frustrated. That is what I mean, when I'm about to have a mid-20's crisis. I'm not where I want to be, and I'm not going where I want to be any time soon. It's frustrating (key word of the week!). It's like golf. You gotta hit that dimpled ball into a little hole. The more times you have to hit it, the lower your score. Not everyone's a pro-golfer, so it's alright that you won't get an eagle or a par or a birdie or some crap like that. But when you're stuck in a bunker (that's the sand pit, and it's difficult to get a ball out of there) and you keep trying to get the ball out, but it ain't moving -- you're stuck -- can you imagine? If you can, imagine me in a trendy golf outfit with a fabulous visor to match; but I'm hopping mad and throwing a temper tantrum, throwing golf clubs at the caddy, and pushing over golf carts, and kicking the sand. That's kind of like a metaphor for what I am about to feel.
Why am I 'about' to feel it and not feeling it now? I'm beginning to feel it coming -- the frustration and the anger, amounting so high, it's going to activate a chain reaction of very unpleasant emotions (impossible to depict using Unkymood -- gotta get rid of that). I'm already in that bunker now, but at the moment, I'm just telling myself... "I can do this... come on, I can do this... (swing)... DOH! Sh*t! Mother of God! F**k! Damn!" and repeating this process. I'm very close to exploding, that's what it is.
Too much complaining, not enough 'doing something about it.' I better get back to work. Bills don't pay themselves, apparently. Sigh.
