Today I woke up late and got to work 30 minutes after I was supposed to. Work was okay, and despite an unusual number of phone calls to the front desk I was able to get a lot of homework done. As soon as I got off, I ran to interview an informant for a paper on suburban families. She was late so I began to worry; however, she finally showed up and the interview went extraordinarily well. Afterward, I finally had the chance to go home for a minute and just sit. I took a quick shower and then went to go take one of my best friends from community college out for a birthday dinner. It's a unique experience, what we went through, and it helped to create a bond that I'm pretty sure will be there forever. In any case, it was SO good seeing her and another friend from our CC and eating Cheeseboard--the pizza today was roasted leeks with sweet chard, fontina and mozzarella cheeses, citrus zest and garlic olive oil, in case you were wondering. After an absolutely hectic week, it was exactly what I needed--especially considering how crazy busy this weekend is going to be. It's hard to find people you can be completely at ease with, in which you can be yourself without any limits and not worry about being judged.
Afterward, I went home and watched an episode of Mad Men, and once I was done I realized I was completely alone--neither of my roommates were home, and all of a sudden I was left alone with my thoughts. I was completely overwhelmed; I've been so frustrated all week but so busy that I didn't even have time to process or deal with how upset I was. The second I cleared my mind of papers, work and stress in an attempt to relax, the negativity seeped in. Everything that I had pushed back came rushing forward, and it was everything I could do to not burst out in tears. It's unnecessary to detail all of what I was thinking about, but I quickly realized that a lot of it was, for lack of a better term, petty bullshit. That's when I made a decision.
I'm done with letting the little things get me down. I'm done with having any sort of negative personalities around me. I'm done with playing stupid games and I'm done wasting my time on people who aren't worth it. I am at Berkeley, at my dream school, and I've only got a month left in this semester and then one more before I graduate and enter the real world. I worked so hard--harder than most people realize--to get where I am today and I'm not going to waste a single second of it worrying about stupid things that I cannot change. I'm a junior transfer and on top of going to school full-time I have two part-time jobs. Quite frankly, I'm too busy to waste time letting bullshit get to me; if I'm not getting something out of what I'm spending my time on, I'm cutting it out of my life.
I'm going to do my best and work my hardest and that's all I can do. I'm going to write the best papers I can and if I don't get an A, then fuck it, whatever! Life is too short to worry about grades that won't matter ten years down the line and life is too short to spend it crying about past regrets. No one knows how long they have to live, so I'm not going to throw away a single second. I'm going to work hard and play harder, because I know that I'll only be young for so long and I don't want to waste my best years. I'm going to enjoy every moment of every day and take every chance that comes my way because I don't want to look back and regret anything. Though I'm looking ahead, I'm done attempting to have a set plan, because let's face it, that's not how life works. I'm going to go with the flow and just live.
Maude said it best, "*Reach* out. Take a *chance*. Get *hurt* even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE!"
That's exactly what I'm going to do.
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