Ugh

As of recent, I haven't been very talkative, either online or IRL. The truth is, I'm just tired and want some space. I promise it's not depression-related (at least, I really hope it's not), but all I want to do as of recent is disc golf and sleep. What that tells me is that I'm sick of sitting inside and want to get out and enjoy the weather while it's enjoyable. It also tells me that I'm too busy and need to lighten up a bit on the things that I can lighten up on (social life, internet, etc.), so that I can more feasibly take care of the things that I need to take care of (work, academics, etc.) without becoming overly stressed like I'm so prone to. Also, the winter makes me restless and jittery, wanting to get out but not having much to do. Then by the time summer rolls around I've worn myself out and all I want to do is relax. 

I'm powering through the end of this semester with a vengeance. During the entirety of my collegiate career, I've never been this far behind on anything. I'm scrambling to catch up on old assignments while trying to remember to do current assignments. Shame on me for procrastinating for so long. Moving off campus has been refreshing in regard to being able to actually sleeping at night, but more challenging than I had expected in regard to staying motivated to keep on top of my academics. Additionally, this is my second to last semester, so I know by this point that any hope of raising my GPA the .08 points necessary to earn that shiny gold honors cord has already gone out the window. If anything, I just want to keep myself above a 3.3 by the time I graduate. If what the graduate advisers at Stout told me is true, then as long as I stay between a 3.0 and a 3.5, I should be golden for getting into grad school. 

Speaking of grad school and graduating and the end of my undergrad and things with the word "grad" in them, I have no fucking clue what I'm going to do with my life when I graduate in December. Odds are, I'll wind up back in Wisconsin, but doing what? There are a few stressful things about the prospect of graduating. First, the excitement of finishing school is only making it more tempting to slack off. Second, since I'm a student worker, my current employment will end as soon as I walk across the stage and receive my diploma. Third, I know that no matter where I end up, for the sake of my mental health, there's no way I can let myself end up back at my dad's house. So what does this mean? Well, I need to bust ass and get my academic work done. Finish strong, right? But on top of that, I also have to find myself a job to go into after I graduate. I'm starting to look into options for that now, because I don't want to find myself between a rock and a hard place, a diploma in one hand and an empty wallet in the other.

Of course, there's also the pressure of wanting to find work that will actually be something meaningful to what I want to do in life: helping people. In particular, I would like to get a job in which I would be working with juvenile delinquents. Of course, there's not much in that area I can do with a bachelor's that will earn a sizable income, but it could be just enough to get me by financially while gaining experience that will help me when it comes time to start grad school. And speaking of grad school, I don't even know if I want to start in the fall of 2016 or if I want to wait until 2017 or even 2018. There's just no real knowing at this point. Lincoln Hills (the juvi I spent over a year of my teenage life in) is almost continuously hiring for youth counselors, and I've heard that my past experience as an inmate there could be greatly beneficial to the kids having someone they can relate to and who can relate to them. With any luck, this could be my foot in the door to a decent career doing something actually meaningful.

On a lesser note... I am an impulsive spender. By impulsive, I mean I set out on Friday to spend maybe $100-130 on two pairs of shoes, and ended up spending $375ish on two pairs of shoes, Starbucks, Chipotle, jeans, and here comes the big kicker, studio monitors. Of course, I'm fairly okay with the monitors; they'd be somewhere between $400 and $600 new, and I picked them up used for $180 at Music Go Round. There's nothing wrong with them, so far as I can tell, and they sound phenomenal (and look right at home) here in the studio. See?

You can kind of see in this picture, but I've also set up the work space to have the computer placed under the desk, with a separate monitor, keyboard, and mouse up top, so that I can help eliminate some of the computer noise that likes to bleed its way into my recordings. I still need to find a way to really block out that space under the desk while recording so the computer is better isolated, but that'll have to wait a couple weeks until I can finish these last couple songs for class and I'm ready to start actually recording everything.

Anyway, I need to tuck this away so I can go take care of some things that are calling my attention, like homework and an appointment (that internship life, yo). So, until later.