Friday, August 15, 2003

It seems that hell may have frozen over this past week. The unthinkable may have happened. It might really be true. I might really be getting broadband. Really. Soon, I may be living the dream!

Well, half the dream anyway. Technically, the best I can get is X5, which will make my downloads superfast and my uploads, well, they won't change much. But superfast downloading! ::squeals::

Of course, just as I start catching up to the broadband revolution, record companies start freaking out and suing random kids for downloading songs. ::shrugs::

Anyway, my mom's stuff at the hospital went off today without a hitch. But apparently I have to take older sister #1 (not the Valley Fever one, who I took to the hospital last month) to one of the big city hospitals (Cleveland or Columbus, not sure which yet) to get, what I'm told is laproscopic therapy or something, because she gets kidney stones terribly frequently. Literally, she's had hundreds of the damn things over the years, and she's got them again now. I feel really quite bad for her, because I've seen how painful they are. She's the only person I've ever seen in so much pain that they actually busted a blood vessel in their eye. And I've seen it happen to her multiple times.

In better news, I reread C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle last night, and The Horse and His Boy today. I love the Chronicles of Narnia. I really do. I must have read those books a thousand times when I was little. And I'll probably read them a thousand more times now that I'm an adult and my reading speed has expanded enough that I can tear straight through one in an hour; it's a little strange to pick up new metaphors from a book I've read so many times, but it's also kind of delightful. The thing that I've missed all these years, and I got last night, was Peter's closing up the door to "the Real Narnia" with a golden key; I guess all this Catholicism has finally rubbed off on me. But as I put down the Last Battle last night I had a weird thought. I thought to myself, "I can't wait to read this to my kids." And then I thought, "Holy Hell, someday I'll have kids!" And then I was happy.

All my plans about growing up have gone up in smoke recently. I wrote the other day about how I was considering Journalism, even though pursuing that would sort of invalidate my past three years of work, and my prior plans to become a history professor, and would necessitate a fifth year of college down in Columbus. I bridged the subject with my parents, who immmediately got quite excited about it. Apparently they were never all that big on my majoring in history; both thought that journalism was the right career for me, and were only too polite to say so. So they won't be mad at me if I don't graduate in four years; I guess I'm the only one who a fifth year of college bothers. It helps, of course, that they're not paying my tuition. But they're both encouraging me to go for it now, and I think that I might.

I'll finish up my history degree here in Mansfield this year, then I'll spend the entire year in Columbus, beginning next fall, working on journalism. I can maybe live with my niece; which would help both of us out. And it could be exciting and good to move out on my own. I'll graduate next year with degrees in history and in journalism, and that should put me at an edge for getting a decent job, and I won't be that far behind my age group since I'll still be only 22. God knows I'll never forgive myself if I end up at the News Journal after all that effort.

I'm stupid and slow when it comes to figuring out my future. But I feel good about this journalism thing. I'm going to think it over a little longer and wait for some more input. But it's feeling feasible and right. This is the first time I've really felt this certain about life after college.