When the end is near, think of me.

Quote of the Day: Life is a strange and cruel mistress. Sometimes you just have to accept it, learn to be a masochist, and love the pain that she brings. 

And with that cheerful quote the next stage of my life begins. A week from tomorrow I will walk across the stage at the Rose Garden and accept the diploma which has slowly sapped the life from me for the last four years. All of the sleepless nights, the procrastination, the tears, the rage; All of it poured into an 8 1/2 by 11 inch piece of paper stuffed in the a leather sleeve. Man, I was really hoping this was going to be more climactic....

When you envision the end of your college career as a young high school student, you imagine grandure, you imagine the praise and the hope, the high paying job with the possibility of advancement and the house that is soon on your horizon, you imagine the world at your feet waiting to respect you as an adult with a degree, but is this pomp, are these circumstances real? 

No. Those dreams, those things, they are a figment of the young, naive imagination. 

Ok so perhaps my pessimism is getting the best of me. I did have the luxury of getting a job, with good pay, and benefits. Is it in my field? No, but then again I was lucky enough to graduate from college in the midst of a recession so, this is definitely the bright side of the whatever analogy you would like to insert here.  But I guess what I am saying is that, you commit to a higher education hoping to come out of it ahead of the pack, with a sense of accomplishment, feeling like you just spent all that time and money on something that you are going to put to hard use, and I suppose that my ending feels a bit, well. Lacking. 

I am lucky to have had the wonderful support, love, and  guidance along this journey but I just can't help but feel that I am letting down all of the people who helped me through. I know that a job in a time like this is a Bird in Hand, but, alas, the disappointment remains, flourishing in my mind and destroying any excitement that tries to escape.

Yet, with all the moans and groans I know that I am fortunate and I should accept this as the next step, and even though I may not know the direction I'm traveling in but, hell, does anyone really know that?