SO INTENSE

...is a good way to describe my last post. A bit too intense, mayhaps.

But, if you managed to get through it (uncomfortable squirming included), you would have found that I've hatched a hair-brained scheme to get back into the engineering groove. Hooray part-time grad school! If I get accepted, that is. I've applied to a few schools near Philly, and am hoping to either A.) Get a decent job that allows me to pay for a few classes per semester, or B.) Apply to an assistantship/fellowship for the following year, and just take one or two classes this year. Either way, I'd finally be productive and working toward my masters. It's not much, but at the same time, it's a whoooole lot.

My funky mood aside, I've actually been keeping up with the purpose of this blog (while not, erm, actually writing about it). But I have! For cereal! A few months ago, I started a lifting program in honor of the dreaded "beach season", and have (for once) started seeing results. Which means that I may not be a walking skeleton come July! And if you're familiar with my inability to gain any sort of weight, you know this is a big deal.

Am I still running, though? Ho yeah - although not as much as I was last fall. But I have a plan. Oh yes, a devious, maniacal, take-over-the-world-or-at-least-northern-Delaware type plan. Here's how it goes:

Step 1.) Continue with lifting program until late July, early August, when I've become a ripped, glistening Adonis of pure muscle, physique, etc etc.

Step 2.) Throughout said lifting program, continue running 9-12 miles per week, just to keep my legs with me. Occasionally pull-out a 5-miler, because sometimes it's impossible to hit the road, music blasting in your ears, and not run all over the city. But NO MORE.

Step 3.) Once lifting program ends, gradually step up my mileage until I'm running 20+ miles a week - all at comfortable speeds, just so I can get a feel of the road again. Continue lifting 2-3 days a week, if only to maintain my completely ridiculous new beach body. This should take me to the beginning of September.

Step 4.) GET IT. Which is to say, start the super-secret training plan I have to completely shatter last year's (slightly miserable) performance at the annual Thanksgiving 5k.

Step 5.) Win 5k, become symbol of human perfection, smile and make everyone in the area swoon, sign infantile foreheads, etc etc etc.

It's a good plan, no? I know you're impressed. Don't try to pretend that you're not quietly scribbling down every step of my plan, hoping to make it your own and challenge my greatness. BUT YOU WON'T. Because as much as I as sometimes blither about how my life sucks, I'm also now a smidgen obsessed with becoming better than I was - at least physically. And I will beat you (with a smile, though!).

So, there's a less INTENSE-FEEL-MY-WRATH update for you. I'll try to be good and actually keep posting, but we'll see.

Until next time!

Oh How The Times Are Changin

Oh how the times are changin.

Or are they? Sometimes I can't tell.

This world, always exposed to me;

I can click to see it move, see it evolve.

But what world evolves?

Is a world in which I am unchanging, unmoving,

Still the world?

To me?

To anyone else?

Sometimes I can't tell.

Sometimes I don't know.

--------------------------------

My days are starting to run together, it seems. I wake up - sometimes at 4:30am, sometimes at 9am, depending on the job and the hours - and head to work. I come home. I work out. I look for jobs. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I knit. Sometimes I paint. At all times, I think. I think about one thing.

Am I even meant to be an engineer any more?

Sometimes I wish that an employer would just do the deed. Look, maybe this isn't the line of work for you. Maybe it's time to find your calling elsewhere. Just so I would finally know to stop looking, to start "considering my options." But no one does. No one says it. You're a great candidate they say. I have no doubt you'll be incredibly successful in engineering. But not with them, apparently. This....this is what's driving me nuts.

So I keep going. Even though this dread - this awful dread that being out of engineering so long has made me unemployable - makes me doubt every step I take, makes me second guess every application I fill out. I keep going. I am meant to be an engineer I say. The options, always drifting in and out of my mind, grow more realistic and yet more disgusting everyday.

How can I know I'm not meant to be an engineer if I've never been one? Who will let me be one?

I decided a few months ago that this waiting, this unbearable reliance on everyone else to make me an engineer, was too much. So I started to think of the things that I could do to get back in the game. And, given that no one takes a chance on me in the next few months, I've formulated a plan.

I've applied to go back to graduate school, part-time, in Philadelphia. I will pay for it myself. I will find some job, closer to the city, that allows me to pay for maybe one class per semester, maybe two. Allows me to pay my bills. Allows me to finally move. Allows me to finally feel like I'm doing something. I will work and I will study. I will be an engineer.

This past year, I have worked 60+ hour weeks at two part-time jobs - sometimes working harder than those lucky sonsabitches with full-time jobs. It kills me that I'm working this way, at jobs that have nothing to do with engineering, just to get by, just to pay off my college loans. But you know what? I own it. I work hard and I own it, because I know that people have gone out on a limb, giving me jobs that I'd like - more than anything - just to escape from. And if I disappoint these people, what's to say I won't disappoint those people in the future who rely on me to be an engineer? So I don't disappoint them.

Maybe I'm not meant to be an engineer. Maybe someday, down the road, I'll discover my true calling.

But that will not be until after I have tried, have worked and made it, as an engineer.

"No one promised you there would be universal justice, you know."

A smart quote from a good book written by a smart man. Look it up.

Love actually small, overweight pony

Authorities find love, put on aggressive diet

By CP of the Blogger Quarterly

It was a scene of celebration and mild confusion as authorities ended what had become a centuries-long search, involving billions of bitter participants. They had found Love, and Love was morbidly obese.

Spectators chatted excitedly in the chilly air as a crew of firemen cut down the wall to a weather-worn wooden shed, revealing Love, a tiny, overweight pygmy pony. Gnawing lazily on a bale of hay, the pony showed little interest in the proceedings until a brave fireman waved a Bonbon through the newly-created hole. On small, sturdy legs that were all but eclipsed by the jiggling mass of pony stomach fat, Love ambled through the opening, thus exposing itself to the world. Scattered applause broke the morning silence.

The search for Love had been a constant presence in the media for nearly a millennium, although police captain Chris Spankypants said a surge of people suddenly started enquiring about Love’s whereabouts as the fourteenth of February approached.

“It was insane,” recalled Captain Spankypants. “As soon as the first of February passed, it seemed as if every other person was desperately looking for Love. Our assignment desk said that notices about the search started to flood the personal ad section in the local newspapers, not to mention the internet. Finally, it got to the point where our mayor asked us to create a formal investigation.”

Several days into the investigation, Spankypants received an anonymous tip that Love might be found in a small storage shed off of Haters Lane. Twenty minutes later, the pygmy pony was found. The captain, wearing a bedazzled vest and sparkling in the early light, was both relieved and slightly baffled.

After questioning the residents of neighboring houses, it was revealed that the pony had belonged to former-resident Johnson McJohnsonson. Johnson had purchased the pony for his five year old daughter Johnsina, who promptly named the portly steed Love. Johnsina was forced to leave Love behind, though, when the McJohnsonson family relocated overseas last month. In the chaos of moving, Johnson apparently only had time to fill the shed with twelve tons of hay before locking the doors one last time.

Upon asking for details about what would happen to the chunky, hooved hero, Spankypants referred all questions to Dr. Eunee Korn.

“Love has been transferred to a rehabilitation facility and is now on a significantly-reduced diet of carrots and oats,” Korn said. “I advise everyone to no longer let the search for Love overcome their lives. We should all, though, expect to see Love in better shape sometime in the future.”