Far Too Long.

It's been quite some time since I posted. It's honestly been quite some time since I've had time to do anything. This summer, I'm working two jobs. I get up at 6 and leave around 7. I teach from 8-1, then have a break where I either go to the gym or plan my lessons for the next day. At 2:45 I arrive at my other job, a customer service representative answering phones all day for a company that does photographs of graduations and marathons. At 9, I drive home and arrive at my apartment about 9:20. I have about 40 minutes left to myself before I need to go to sleep in order to be fully rested for the next day. Fridays I only work one job, and I have to work some Saturdays and Sundays. However, July 4th I was lucky enough to not work either job.

I want to talk about my jobs today. I've been working at the customer service job since May. It's an interesting place--there are 60 of us in cubicles in a room. I have no idea who anyone is save the 6 or so people who sit around me. For a month, until the second job started, I worked the morning shift. My three coworkers became some sort of friends to me. Meaning that we all stand up and tell the other three whenever we have an extremely awful or wonderful customer on the phone. I even hung out with one of these people outside of work once. And plan to again, she's awesome! Every morning, before the phones start, I would have her tell me about this guy with whom she's getting closer and developing a relationship. We don't have much time to talk about it during the day. Any conversation is disjointed and broken. As soon as a phone rings, the speaker has to finish the last sentence before the phone reaches the fourth ring and the supervisors ask you why you aren't answering your phone. Anyways, summer school started three weeks ago and I changed to the evening shift. At first, I felt lonely and resentful. I was surrounded by a new group of strangers, two of whom were incredibly good friends outside of work. However, the necessity to be sociable overcame me holding on to some idea that I didn't want to talk to more strangers, and I began standing up to tell them the same ridiculous stories. Thus, I know a total of 6 people: The three people surrounding my cubicle in the morning shift and the three in the evening shift.

At 9 pm, I walk outside to my car. The sun has set, but the sky isn't dark yet. There's still some light to the west. I pull onto the interstate, roll down the windows, and blast music from my iPhone to try not to feel sad about the days that I'm seemingly wasting. Money is a necessity, I tell myself. I need money for grad school. I need money for the wedding. But I still can't shake that feeling that I'm wasting my time. I feel emotionally drained and lonely. The summertime was always a time of fun for me, especially the evenings. As a child, twilight is the time of day that I remember playing outside with Dustin, not noticing the gradual setting of the sun until it was too dark to see ourselves on the trampoline or throwing the football or whatever other activity we had partaken in that day. The past four years, my summers were spent in Deland, and I spent evenings with friends, mainly Jordan (one of my bridesmaids.) Now, I spend evenings answering emails and phones for minimum wage, and drive home looking at a sky that forces me to recall fun, sociable times. I make it home barely in time for sleep, only to wake up the next morning and leave my house at a time after sunrise that reminds me of camps and mission trips and adventures. I keep reminding myself that two jobs are only for six weeks, but I have this gnawing feeling inside of me that life is slowly changing for good, and the times of recreation and socializing and fun are over with forever. With my B.S. Degree, I earned myself a certain amount of adulthood, and with that achievement I must sacrifice other elements of my life.

I think if I didn't have Mike always ready to talk to me, and Leah just 50 yards away, I might go crazy with loneliness. As it is, I'll just cling on to my work ethic to make it through the next 3 weeks and see where I end up then.