The idea has been bumping around in my brain for a while now, but today it dribbled out of my mouth as I talked to a classmate on the metro, heading toward the woods for a meditative walk before landing back home. Basically, I am growing older. I am an adult, but due to administrative difficulties and mass confusion in the decision-making and self-assertion parts of my brain, I have been trapped in this weird limbo between a student-infested world of 20 year olds who still think that the bars at St-Michel are fun and a large network of "young professionals" who are buying apartments and doing other things that you can do when you are young and have some disposable cash. The problem being that, while I have nothing against the young 'uns, I am not one of them. I really do prefer dinners with friends and nights out at bars with people who are no longer students. But yet, I am not really operated in the same life style circle as the others, leaving me isolated and depressed. It's strange. I am still outside of the Matrix, but instead of interpreting it as a sweet sign of revolutionary bohemianism on my part, I find myself dreaming of offices and paychecks and stability and mindless mediocrity.

After a full year of directionlessness, I have decided that I need to get a direction and quick! I have created in my mind a 5 year-plan that involves getting through the school year, finding some run-of-the-mill business-y position and being ready to get a Master's in whatever it is that I fall into by the time I am 30. Now, don't worry, I am not abandoning the undecided masses. I have not decided what I want to do, just that I want to do something. I've come to realize that there are going to be things I hate about just about any "job" so I've decided that I want one that will allow me to exist without too many financial worries. So, come the fall, when hopefully papers will not be an issue (more on that at a much later date) I am banking on being a part of the business casual class. Until then, I just need to suck it up and try to do my best at the minor tasks at hand, such as school and finding a teaching job for January. But I tell you, life is majorly heavy right now. I find myself unable to even have interesting thoughts. I just keep singing Special Sauce over and over again in my head, entering into a kind of self-induced trance to make me stop obsessing over the fact that an ATM ate my bank card because I HAVE NO MORE MONEY.

So there you have it, Mandounette, once a brave warrior of idleness, is being pushed forward by only one terribly banal desire: To have enough money to buy name brand orange juice.