So working all the fantastic hours I do at my wonderful tiny fast-food restaurant-let in a local mall has allowed me to meet some very interesting people. While I appreciate the boys who work hard to keep my grill area clean and stocked, there are a couple of girls whom I admire. One is about to graduate from high school and is all ready to go to a big university in the Fall.  And the other just finished her first year of college. I see them and I am openly jealous. They are at the beginning of the their journey. They also have the plan all set before them. I know it sounds so closed minded of me to think that in my early twenties I am at the end of my rope. I just see these bright young women who see our current employment as a paycheck, not a career. And seeing them see this job that way is helping me to get my butt in gear and find a way to get out of there. I want to actually use my degree. I want to get out of my parents house. And I can do it. I just need to stop being lazy and do things. Start getting my life going, not acting like this path I'm on is my path. ...Now to go get my clothes ready for my fantastic job... Shoot me :P

Graduation Day

So today one year ago I was waking up and getting ready for my own graduation. It seems like so long ago and like yesterday all at the same time. Life is a gift, but I feel like this past year has been a throw-away year. I graduated from college a year early. So I shouldn't have graduated until today. I feel like this gives me another chance to start my real life. I know that sounds terrible. But I don't feel like I've been able to get as far as I had hoped to get. How far are we expected to get in just one year? Because I feel like I have been just stuck in a rut, not moving forward, merely stuck and wiggling around, pretending to move forward.
I feel as if I should have some great philosophical comment about life and living it to it's fullest. But then I would be a hypocrite in most regards. I haven't. I have been lazy and scared to move. I'm sick of feeling as if I should just be handed the world. No work required. I read an article in Cosmo about how my generation expects so much because we have been handed certain things our whole life. Opportunity can be a curse. As I was reading it, I knew that that wasn't me. I never felt entitled or above doing hard work. Until I got my degree. Now I am the stereotypical entitled girl. I have been resting on my degree, not putting it, or myself to work.
So I guess my big piece of philosophical advice to the graduating class, is, have a fantastic day and a wonderfully relaxing summer, but don't get caught up in the R&R and forget what you want to accomplish. Or you may wake up one day, a year after your graduation, and wonder when the job you had since you were in high school became your career, or become repulsed by your own acceptance of the little room in your parents house as "your pad". Change is scary, but being stuck in the past is much more terrifying.

So I created this account to talk about my life and how I view the world. And then I disappeared. I have been hiding from my computer. Turning away when I saw it. Ignoring my emails and my intense Facebook updates. Opening it only to update my iPod then quickly closing it before I got too attached. In college I could not have been away from my computer for an hour without getting some kind of withdrawal symptoms, sweaty palms, jitters, all that fun stuff. But I have discovered that hiding from my beautiful, though slightly off-white, macbook was synonymous with me hiding from myself. I have been detaching myself from the world, from the NY Times, from my Facebook (which has both a healthy community of my family and friends and crazy people who I don't remember ever meeting.) I have just been hiding behind my work, or my new gym membership, or my TV. I haven't been living my life, and obviously I have not been reporting about my life either :P
As much as I think that technology can distract us from our life, I also believe that it has also done a phenomenal job of connecting us. Bringing information and friends together over common ideas and grounds. My running from it was be running from my family and friends, running from my writing.

I hate to admit it, but some days I feel like Liz Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love. (Not just because my name too is Elizabeth. *Any internet stalkers out there I hope you are now taking note of my personal information lol*) But because I feel like I am gliding through life, not living, or learning, just breathing and sleeping through it. I just don't know how to best connect to myself and others. I am so sick of hiding and running. I need to accept how my life is and what changes I need to make to enjoy it more. Any suggestions, other than running all over the world of course :P ??