I want to write more than anything. My heart is yearning to do so and my brain won’t stop telling me to get up and form words into sentences. More than likely it’s because it has been some time, a good chunk in fact, that I haven’t written. It appears that once school was over my brain shut down entirely and has only recently rebooted, which is s good thing considering the new semester starts a week from Monday.
This will be the semester that I actually take a journalism course. Up until this point it’s been random classes that fit my set schedule. They were great and I did enjoy them, but they weren’t why I am re-attempting college.
I still can’t get over the fact that my major is journalism. The memories of me saying “absolutely not” to the subject are still very vivid in my mind. In high school I had no interest in telling, what I called reality, “the truth.” I preferred to live in fictitious places and stories with my own characters for company. (Not that that is no longer the case, by the way.) What collegiate goals I had in high school were English or theatre, two of the most worthless degrees in the modern world. It is a terrible and cold to say such a thing but it is true. My husband has beat that into my skull and I can’t forget that unless I plan on teaching those particular subjects they really serve no greater purpose to the world at large. Truthfully, the same could be said about journalism.
My husband is more than obsessed with money. Another word should be created just to describe his craving and desire for cash. Although it isn’t just small amounts of the green backs. Oh no. It is wealth. Opulence. He wants to be his father. The man, my father-in-law, is hard working for sure, but a giant douchebag. He has no interest in sharing his “wealth.” And I say it in quotes because I think most of it is exaggerated in his telling. As my husbands dad likes to say, “don’t let facts get in the way of a good story.” It is this man and his money that has my husband bewitched, for lack of a better word. At one point my husband was proud of me for going back to school (and he still is) but now he’s repeated, on a few occasions now, that journalists don’t make much money. He got that piece of information from the old miser.
Maybe I am just truly bohemian where I am more concerned with how I feel with the job that the return. Charlie is the complete opposite. Well, in the beginning. He wants the cash but doesn’t want to do the work of he doesn’t like what he’s doing. For instance, he has researched the shit out of how much teachers salaries are (he’s studying to be a high school teacher) and what level of education brings in the most income. I worry that he hasnt taken into consideration whether he will like working with kids. Given his past history for impatience with children I feel my concern is warranted. But more than anything I am scared that he will be just like his mother and jump from job, to job, to job, to job and then wind up with nothing to show for his efforts come retirement.
Me on the other hand, my mother gave me stability. She worked for State Farm my entire youth and racked up 40 years of experience with the company. She would probably still be working there if her department hadn’t been moved to Colorado. I think it was this example that gave me my perseverance for staying in one place. Granted I will be jumping ship when I have completed my education, but I am nowhere near that point.
The Journal of a Jaded Josh 