A Day In The Life

Well I told my dad that May was simply a transitional month between college and home life, and that I would start reading some books in June. And then I realized the other day that it actually is June right now and that the month is nearly over, and I've yet to finish a single book. Instead, I spend a lot of time balancing two jobs: One as a bag room employee at Illini Country Club, where I wash golf clubs (efficiently enough that I was christened "Clubs Magee" last summer) and ride golf carts. Sort of like Mario Sports for Wii. That's my job. On my days off I occasionally pull shifts for my friend's dad at his law office or doing chores around his house, sometimes doing so with my friend, which is fun. We give ourselves extended lunch periods. I'm selfish and I like some days of total relaxation and me time, so I find a way to deceptively award myself at least one or two whole days off, telling my bosses I'm just working at the other job on those particular days.

In my free time, I get up as early as I can, which is usually like 10:30 or 11:00 in the morning. I've given up showering immediately upon waking up, preferring instead to head straight downstairs and watch Nickelodeon (Spongebob, Ned's Declassified, etc.) or TCM (1960s-era cowboy films are so appropriate in the morning). Sometimes, like now, I simultaneously pull out the laptop, with which I surf Facebook, order materials online through interlibrary loan or complete overdue blog posts. Like last summer, essentially every single lunch I make myself comprises of lunch meat and cheese toasted on a bagel. It never gets old.

By the afternoon I usually get bored, so I'll call up a friend of mine and we'll either shop for records downtown (mostly searching for the cheapest Beatles LPs we can find) or just hang out in his Basement, with a capitol B. Hanging out in the Basement consists of listening to records, "discovering" new things about previously listened-to music, watching VHS tapes (Wee-Sing's Grandpa's Magical Toybox is trippy as hell. Jurassic Park is alternately hilarious and terrifying), shooting pool and scratching 98% of the time, and well, you can probably guess what else we sometimes do beforehand in order to ensure that any of the aforementioned things happen.

Nighttime is tough. I have two sets of friends, and I struggle deciding how to allocate my time between them. Last summer I failed miserably, choosing to devote most of my time to this fairly new set of friends who didn't need to drink and black out every single night in order to have fun, instead searching out and listening to new music, enjoying time spent outside and doing new things. But this year, my old high school friends are much more subdued, and they drink less often and more responsibly. Therefore, I've spent more time with them, as well as doing things with individual people on certain nights. So now I don't see the friends I saw all the time last summer as much, and they're starting to question me. It's weird, and hard to explain to them, but I try not to worry about scheduling friend-time and equally dividing my attention among them anymore. It's like work. In summers past, when I've overscheduled myself and worried about everything, I've found little happiness, mostly just feeling bad for the friends I avoid. Now I'm trying to go with the flow and enjoy myself without snubbing anyone. It's not like I'm lying to anyone. I think as the summer progresses, my friends will understand that more.

But then this whole time, I keep aching to spend time with you guys! I'm enjoying my time at home with my family, friends and turntable, but it's going to be so great to hang out with you all again. I close my eyes in my bedroom, hoping to hear Bob playing a new song on his guitar. Sometimes I think I wouldn't even be uncomfortable to find Bryce using my shower. In time, future roomie. In time. Can you believe I haven't had a McDonald's sweet tea since this night???:



Also, I want to come back to school so I can meet new people and play the field a bit, if possible. There are no girls to make connections with here at home and too many past feelings and blah blah, so I feel inspired to "get out there" and be more assertive and meet some cool girls. Yeah.

And then at the end of the night I come home and watch TV or a movie, making myself a snack to munch on during. Except I feel like these late-night snacks are proving to be my downfall, so now I'm trying to run every morning in order to keep myself in shape and retain that Perfect-10 figure I'm so proud of. But I smoke too much, and running can be tough, but I still masochistically enjoy it anyway. Mostly because I'm most nostalgic about my days on the cross country team in high school, running on lazy summer mornings in peace. So by trying to stay in shape, I'm also attempting to relive the "sun-scorched memories of my youth" (Cavanagh 1).

Wow! That's my life nowadays, in a nutshell. Damn, I hope it's not too boring to read about.