2 minute overview.

There is a new girl at work who sucks hardcore. She sucks the life out of the place and she threatens the nice little clique of intellectual misfits we have created. I was uber rude to her last night because she is abrasive and approaches people like a salesman. I despise her and they want me to spend the next week training her. What to do. What to do.

Connecticut time.

Is that You?

Guess who saw this little fucker walking through the store yesterday. No lie.

Don't know who he is? Google Star Trek or Termination Salvation, and his face may start to look a little familiar.

I was walking through the fiction aisle the other day, contemplating the state of my life when I saw a cute guy flipping through a book. He was wearing all black, expect for a gray scarf wrapped around his neck and naturally his skinny awkward stance drew my attention.

I was going to do my usual, yeah he's cute but time to get back to work thing, when I knew that i had seen him before. That for some reason his face was much more familiar than it should be. I am very (very) good with faces and within seconds (despite the fact that he had on a beanie) I knew who it was. But I didn't remember his name, because it was Russian, and I didn't know who to tell because I wasn't sure they would know either.

He was in the store for a good half hour, all of which I spent convincing my co-workers that it was him. Yes, I am that person who not only yells fight, when one is occurring but I also spot out celebrities and rile the crowd up. I don't mean too, I just get a little too excited. We, the "new guy" and the "sort of new girl" followed him to the philosophy section just so we could walk past him and confirm my suspicion. Even then, no one believed me.

Luckily the head cashier, a Star Trek follower, confirmed it was him as soon as Cute Young Actor came up to the cash register. He was a lot skinner in person and his eyes were blood shot. He also had horrible eye contact and looked sort of anxious but the moment Head Cashier saw him, I knew that before me stood Anton Yelchin, because I heard my co-worker stop breathing for a few seconds. Not only did he stop breathing but he was frozen in his tracks. I rang Anton Yelchin up (he bought the communist manifesto. Kids these days) and he was out the door. As soon as he left, I heard my co-worker exhale and say "dude you just rang up Pavel Chekov". Tell me about it. I know hot young actors when I see them.

I continue to struggle with whatever is going on in my head. I feel at a lose for things but I know I am slowly recovering from the suckassness of my life. I may have found a place to live. It's near my aunt's old place and the room is what I need. It is in a private house and the room is...just right. I am stopping by tomorrow to put down the security deposit and by December 1st I should have a place to stay.

Maybe this is the beginning of things falling into place. I do not know. I am very weary of making assumptions these days but it will be nice to have a place that I know I can come back to. That I know I can make feel my own. I am excited about this venture, and I am trying to stay as optimistic as my little heart can. We'll see. I have more to write but I am falling asleep at the keys.

Tomorrow: The Janitor and The Piggy Back Ride. He makes my head hurt. More on that tomorrow though.

Ugh, What a Week

So this week has been hard. Very hard. Can't you tell via my return to small text. Last month I applied to an internship with This American Life. It was a long shot, a shot in the dark, something I knew that I probably would not get. But that didn't stop me from praying to god every night. I was hoping that getting this position would make my life better. I would be a paid intern at a pretty cool job, I would be able to afford a place to live and finally quit my shit job at the bookstore.

I worked incredibly hard on the application. Turned it in a few weeks ahead of the due date and waited patiently. For a month. And then on Monday I get the email that someone else got the position. Someone who isn't me. I didn't even get an interview. My resume and application weren't even good enough to get me in the door. Depression looms. Why does life suck so bad.

I am really trying to be optimistic here, I know that there are a bunch of people like me (recent grad, no prospects) out here trying to land a job but damn it all to hell. What the fuck. I am so over the struggling and the suffering, and the annoyance of life right now. I am standing on the edge, and I am ready to jump. I don't care where I land as long as it isn't here.

It also sucks that I have no one to go to for all this....Thing (that's what I am calling the tension these days. A malignant Thing) that is building inside of me. I feel like a shell because the insides don't exist anymore. They have disintegrated and left me hollow. Maybe it's depression, it feels like anxiety and more recently pure unadulterated rage. Why can't i catch a break, why have I managed to screw up my life in such a way where my home is a couch and my life is spent working for free or passionless at the bookstore.

And this rage, it's not like anything I have ever experienced before because I am not seething red or taking out innocent victims on the street. I am filled with an array of emotions all boiled into one that pours out in tears rather than screams. But I don't really know how to cry, not real guttural ones any way, so even when my eyes begin to tear up I resist the urge to let them flow and instead suck in my breath deeply and will the negative thoughts away. But they never fully go away.

I have been going along with the motions lately. I am doing quite a job of resembling a functioning human being. But I am tired, and low. very. very. low. And I have to get ready to see another potential room that will be my home for as long as I can stand to be in New York. I am starting to fucking hate this place, and anyone who says differently can....see the random rage! I need a break. I need someone to take me away. I need to take myself away. Where can I run? Where can I go and hide?

Letting Little Shop of Horrors Interptet My Life....

Life sucks. But I don't know how to write about it. Rick Moranis knows how I feel....He can explain everything for you.

Calling out Sick

Yeah...that's what I did today. Am I sick, not really. Am I really exhausted, yes. Do I deserve one day off, out of the zero I have had in the last 6 weeks. Yes, yes sir I do.

My day off was nice. I forgot how it was not having to wake up early to be somewhere. I am not lying when I say that I work seven days a week. Five days I am at the bookstore, and the other two days I am in Connecticut trying not to gauge my eyes out with random office supplies including but not limited to: staples, paper clips, and pens, we have a lot of pens in the office.

I am not running on empty, but I am wearing myself thin. My patience, something I value greatly, has been very short these days and I am not displaying the best customer service at work. On Tuesday, it rained something awful. I mean your cliche 'cats and dog" down pour. Usually I love the rain. I believe firmly that nature heals, and there is something about the rain that reminds me of restoration. When it rains I can usually be found in bed, reading a book and listening to the radio on Itunes.

But instead I was awake at some ungodly hour (okay so it was 6:00 but still ungodly by 23 year old standards), ready to embark on a 2 hour trip to lull around at my internship for 8 hours, to only then embark on my two hour trip back to New York. All through the rain. I have to take a bus, a train, another bus, and then walk a block to get to this internship. And doing it two days out of a week is a pain in the ass most days. On Tuesday it was grueling. My shoes were wet, my socks were wet, I was cold and hungry and by the time I got there I was completely drenched.

Now, everyone is suppose to be there around 9:30 so I can be let into the office. I wasn't waiting outside or anything but I have to sit in the lobby until someone opens the door. I got there at 9:25 and spent the next 45 minutes wondering why i was the only one there and what the hell happened to everyone else. The big boss wasn't there, the second big boss wasn't there either and Bethany was a no show. In school this would be called "the 15 minutes rule". If a professor doesn't show up within 15 minutes after the start of class, you book it. You don't wait around, everyone leaves, and sometimes someone will write a note detailing why the professor (if he or she does show up)entered an empty room. I do not know if this works in the real world (probably not) but as I was sitting there, contemplating my life as a permanent intern, the countdown began. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and as I started packing my things I heard all three of them walking upstairs laughing around the 40 minute line.

Something happened to each of them that morning which made them late, and after 2nd Big Boss unlocked the door all I got was a "sorry bout that" from Bethany in a tone that was less than apologetic. Fucking eh. The rest of the whole morning (and day for that matter of fact) I was pissed, because in my mind I live 2 hours away, I don't have a car, I have to walk a huge portion of my trip and yet...I was on time. I was not only on time, but I was early and I don't even get paid to be there. Tuesday was not my most productive day, they didn't show up on time so I wasn't fully present for them. Get your own paper out of the printer!

I am a little over this internship, both because in a few weeks I will have officially completed my three months and because I have no desire to be a part of that industry. Where I love literature and writing, I despise editing and the checks and balance process. Okay I don't hate the last process, it's actually very productive but a little redundant and sometimes I feel like I have been working on the same material forever. But it is not where my heart is, and so I hate the feeling that I am putting in a 100% into...nothing.

There attitude of Tuesday along with my own annoyance about the whole situation (compounded with my lack of sleep the night before) gave me all the incentive I needed to call in sick. Or better yet, email the editor and tell her that i would be unable to come in on Thursday because of an "appointment" that could not be rescheduled. Oh yeah!

My Off Day went by a lot faster than I hoped for. I woke up sort of late, watched some daytime TV, headed to the library again (second time this week) and made spaghetti and meatballs. Oh, the life. As of late I am obsessed with Margaret Atwood (Canadian, Feminist, Explorer of Human Complexity) and I stocked up on some of her books to read today, including one called Margaret Atwood's Fairy-Tale Sexual Politics by Sharon Rose Wilson. The shit is trippy. I have a thing for fairy tales and ways that they are re imagined in art and literature. I read a bunch of her today, and she makes me think about my own writing and stories....pretty good Margaret Atwod, preh-tay preh-tay good.

My "sick day" was good. Not at all productive (can we say 2 hour nap in the middle of the day) but good. I need these days for myself. I miss them, I miss the time to myself where I can catch up with the person who seems to be spiraling a million miles ahead of myself. Or something like that.

I just spent 400 dollars to go home for a week. No lie. I am escaping for a little bit, just to South Carolina where the weather is hot and my bed is big. It's for Thanksgiving of course, but I am hoping that the Carolina slowness will restore me or at least that my mom will feed me something awesome while I am there. Um, I can smell the Turkey now.

Seriously

...I have long (and fake) hair for one day and the guys at work are treating me a little differently. Not that they were ever mean or inconsiderate towards me before, but I am use to being one of the guys more than I am ever considered a girly girl. But the moment I strapped on that wig (and really short skirt. Hey, I had tights on) all the guys at work started treating me like, dare I say it, a lady.



Seriously. The moment I walked into work wearing this ridiculous wig but authentic cheer leading outfit, I went from being nerdy Beckett to "hey how are you doing today". I am very open about my insecurities, at least on this online journal. I don't know where the insecurity comes from but it is there with me always. Outside of not being able to fully look myself in the mirror yet, I still feel like I did when I was in high school. Awkward, short, and not all too put together.

I don't remember if I wrote about the time I was a drama nerd in middle school. I was in the eight grade and as a way to compensate for the homesickness I felt I tried to mirror my life in New York by creating the same one in South Carolina. Moving from the North to the South was literally a change I was not expecting. It didn't help that the first week there, we got into that accident that rendered my face a little more than scratched up for a few weeks. I went from being this 12 year old girl falling into her life in New York, to a 12 year old pre-teen who spent her first summer in South Carolina in her house because of the scars present on my face.

I don't know if you've ever been smacked in the face with an airbag, but not only does it hurt, but it burns. Because of this, my face looked like someone took a fist to it repeatedly. It was difficult then for someone to say I was pretty, when all I could feel and see were these abrasions on my face.

By the time I started school, my face was healed but I was still self conscious and nervous as hell about emerging from my house because of the accident and because being 12 years old at a new school sucks. I tried to mirror my life in the North by doing similar school related activities in SC. I joined the orchestra (because I played the violin in New York), I participated in gym without complaint (because I was a sporty kid in New York) and, more importantly, I joined Drama because in New York I was heavily into plays. But those activities never meant the same thing to me then, the bizarro verision just never had much weight. In the eight grade, I auditioned and was accepted into the semester long drama program (she later admitted that a lot of that had to do with my clear accent). It was the most nerve-racking semester of the year because I was technically still the new girl, and here I was in a class of established thespians. You've seen Glee, don't lie, you know how those drama kids are.

Most of the kids in the program were either popular or super popular. I at the time was neither. I was the new kid, just trying to find my place, just trying to blend in rather than stand out. There was a boy in the class named Ezra, and you'd think with a name like that he would have been nice. But he wasn't. He was popular because he was the class clown, which means that he was "the guy who thought he was funny but was more of a jackass than anything else". A lot of the time we were scene partners because he was the shortest guy in the class (paired with me the shortest girl), but we never got along because I never thought he was funny and he though that I was plain.

One day everyone was sitting around, and someone brought up the conversation of prettiest girls in our grade. I sort of tuned out, until I heard the boys, Ezra mainly, starting to evaluate the girls in the class. When he came to my name and face, he looked at me really hard and said "you're not ugly, but...."

I have lingered on this 'but' for ten years. I feel like it has defined who I am. I am not ugly but "...I am not pretty", "...I could use some improvement" "...I could be pretty if I brushed my hair". The bell rang before he could finish the sentence, before I could hear from this jackass of a 13 year old about my prettiness or maybe lack there of (a few years later, he asked me out. No lie).

So, when I wore this wig on Saturday dressed like a cheerleader and sporting an awesome skirt I never grasped the fact that I may have looked pretty. That Ezra Pressley, was a stupid little jerk, who skewed some sliver of myself that I have yet to gain back

But on Saturday, I may have proved that little fucker wrong.The cafe manager was extra nice, along with the two Stephens, and one Bargain guy, and some customers, who have known to be jackasses, were extra patient on Saturday. I of course didn't care about any of them, I was waiting to see the janitors reaction because we haven't been on the best of terms lately (I've been sick, he's been having a girlfriend. You know, the usual). Needless to say, he did a double take when he saw me at customer service. At first he came over to sign in, and then he lingered for a while, and then he went somewhere and came back because he was looking for janitor stuff.

An hour later, I had to go to the back to get something, and the janitor was close behind. He was very nonchalant when he finally approached me(nice costume, nice wig, yadda yadda yadda). I explained to him that I was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that my hair itched (because I don't know how to conduct myself in front of attractive boys). He was very nice to me the rest of the evening, offering to drive me home, but I was leaving a couple of hours before him, so I had to decline. But what is more interesting is that a day after donning the wig and outfit, he continued this new fond attention towards me. When I came in, I had an awful cough and he spent the next 10 minutes going around the store looking for a cough drop. Then he wanted to know, if I needed a ride home again but I told him that I was leaving an hour earlier than he was so that wouldn't work, and plus I had to go the supermarket.

Instead of saying, Oh Okay, he said he would drive me to the supermarket if I waited an hour. That wasn't going to work either, but I said that maybe I would just go to the supermarket and come back. I mean it's right down the street, I could go get my small groceries and then meet him back at the store so he could drive me home and so I could save 6 bucks. I told him if I didn't come back before 8, then he should just leave without me. He shrugged his shoulders and said that was cool, and then I spent the next 30 minutes running to the supermarket and throwing shit into my basket so I could make it back before 8. It's the muscles, sue me. An hour later I returned to the store, out of breath, and he was pretty much set to go. I started to ask him if he could take the heaviest bag out of my hands but before I could finish the rest of my sentence he had already taken the three bags I had, and started for the door.

Jesus Christ.

Are boys that weird or is being a girl that difficult. He was incredibly nice to me on the way home (and yes, I know that he has a girlfriend and no, I did not jump his bones when he dropped me off. I swear) and it just seemed so peculiar this new change in attitude after our really rough week. Can hair really do that to a boy? Are they so driven by the sight of long locks that they go into a frenzy at the sight of it. Or it could have been the short skirt. I don't know.

It did feel really good being a girly girl for a while, and not taking myself too seriously. I have a tendency of doing a lot of that these days.

Wait It Out

All in A Nights Work..

Today I went to work dressed as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was quite a sight. Not a bad sight either.

There was some charity-isque event going on in the store which was why we all got to wear our costumes. I spent most of the Friday asking everyone if they were dressing up, because I sure as hell didn't want to be the only fool doing it. But most of the guys my age were dressing up, and one of the managers. I didn't see why I shouldn't join in to. I spent all last week getting the items for this costume. My real cheerleader skirt came just in time, and all I needed to buy were tights and a wig (because cheerleaders have hair longer than mine).

There must be something about having long fake hair (thank you party city) a short cheer leading skirt (a shout out to that cheer leading site I ordered it from) and a v-neck sweater (forever 21) which turns you from being just a girl who reads Truman Capote during her breaks to a girl with purpose. I'm just saying. I knew that dressing up as Buffy the vampire slayer, circa the 3rd episode when she tries out for the cheer leading squad, would get interesting reactions but I didn't expect the general shock at my appearance!

I saw myself in the mirror yesterday, something I have not done in a long time and I didn't recognize who I was. I mean if I would have looked like that in high school I may have had a better time. I felt all feminine and then kick ass because of my converse shoes. I love Halloween.

I did however refuse to done a blond wig (for several reasons) a couple of weeks back! Me and Marie got in a huge argument about this because Buffy is a blond, I am not. I did not feel it would violate the costume if I wore a long wig my own hair color. Marie said that I shouldn't wear a wig at all if it wasn't going to be a blond one. Buffy was blond, wearing a long black wig would just be nonsense. The conversation got very heated and I eventually hung up on her.

When I was a kid Buffy was my hero. I mean I remember watching the first episode so clearly because this was when I had a TV/VCR and I stole my brothers blank tape to record the episode. I grew up wanting to be Buffy, of wanting to be an ordinary girl with this extraordinary destiny mapped out for her. But in my visions, I was always my version of the blond prototype. So maybe donning a long black wig (because my hair is not long enough for the full cheerleader hair; pigtails or ponytails) didn't fully follow the character but dammit all to hell I was Buffy the Vampire Slayer today. I don't care who knew it or not.

The costume was a success. So I may have gotten a lot more stares than I am comfortable with (and I think the Janitor said I filled out the outfit 'nicely"), but it was fun. To be honest being someone else for a while was what I needed. This week has been long and hard, like the fake stake a co-worker made for me out of cardboard box.

I am not terribly upset about the room, even though it was gorgeous, but more at the fact that the list of things I need to do in the next couple of months is stressing me out. I need a job, not because the bookstore is a bottomless pit of stupid questions and stupider customers, but because I can't afford to stay here without making the money to do so. And, because I am bright and smart. Right? Now, along with my never-ending job search, I have to find a place to live. It just seems all to much, I'd rather curl into a ball in a corner somewhere. A warm corner, but a corner nonetheless.

Yes, I am a person who rushes things. Yes, I expected my life to start the moment I walked across the stage with my diploma, but what my life is asking from me right now is a plan. And in all honesty I don't have one. I could apply to grad school again, and take the admissions process seriously this time. I could plunge into this job search thing hardcore (not that I haven't been doing that but..), I could run away to Maine or Spain or Costa Rica, which according to AOL.com I can fly to for $399. At this point I am not even wanting for my 'real life' to begin, I am not wanting everything to fall into place right now, I just want to feel like I am moving towards something, and that this wont suck forever. I don't even have faith in that.

But no more of that. My legs itch, my hair itches, and Cops is on. There is something about watching Cops that makes me feel a little better about my life. So yeah, I'm working minimum wage but I didn't just sell crack to an undercover cop. A lot of people featured on Cops can't say that now can they.