let's see
It's foggy today--I can barely see the high-rise student apartments of San Francisco State that reside down the hill (a little less than a mile west) from our house... and I most definitely can't see the ocean today. The fog could rise by the afternoon.

I can't tell if I'm gearing up to be a meaningless twenty-something for a long period of time, but I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable with the fact that I don't have a full-time job, and might not have one for a while. I'm starting to enjoy the openness of my schedule, and find myself things to do, even if they aren't directly helping me pay my rent (ie: volunteering with an after school program, doing some pro-bono translation from English to Spanish, trying to be a volunteer mechanic at the Bike Kitchen).

Eventually these things will either distract me enough that I won't feel unfulfilled, or they will lead to me finding a "real" job of some sort, right? Let's hope so. I am still toying with the idea of graduate school, but hesitant to really stick my whole self into it, because I don't know how long it will take or if I'm ready for that kind of commitment. And what that really means is, I'm still holding onto my "freedom" (whether that exists or not I'm unsure) so I can move someplace else to be with someone important in a year, a few years, whatever the case may be.

A wise woman who I only knew briefly once told me that these long-distance serious relationships are mostly about compromise. She was getting a masters degree in Europe, while her partner lived in Lima, Peru. She said, "I'm doing this, because I need to, but then after it's over, I'll go where he is. I have to compromise like that, otherwise it isn't fair to either of us, to have this unknown amount of time and distance between us."

Regardless of whether I'm too selfish to make a compromise like that, it's not the only thing keeping me from diving straight into grad-school applications. I have vague ideas for awesome projects, but that's about it. I'm not sure what department I want to be in, I sort of what to do social work, but all my background is in environmental stuff, can these two things be merged, etc etc. I think I need to do some serious research to figure out the best way to approach my ideas and really wow whomever it is I want to study with with a badass and creative proposal.

AND I just started a new part-time job with the San Francisco Unified School district, as a substitute aide with special education. It's pretty intense, but I understand now why a good number of people I respect chose to work with children with special needs. So will that figure into this? I guess what I'm saying is that I need more time to decide. But applications are due either in December (in a month, basically) to start in the fall of 2009, or wait another year, and plan on starting in the fall of 2010... which seems eons away from where I'm at now.

[and part of me still secretly want to leave the country again...]