Truth is I'm Lying Again

Ok, perhaps I lied when I said I wasn't bitter about my job.

As much as I tell myself I should be thankful for being employed, making good (re: just above a cardboard box in DC) wages, and having enough free time at it to be able to do homework, it's all just a facade. Every time I think about doing this for months upon years on end, a little piece of my soul dies, and angels cry/laugh for/at me. Day in and day out I answer phones in an effervescently perky tone exuding exclamation points and helpfulness. Southern mama or not, I don't do perky or helpful all that well. You'd be amazed at my ability to throw a three course dinner party and still serve it with side of snark. So to spend forty hours a week feigning a whole other personality that I lack in every way can be trying, and visions of the displaced children of Uganda just make me feel guilty, not gracious.

Now I have to ask myself, how did I get here? I've spent my whole life preparing for the next step, and believe me when I say I never thought it would be shuffling invoices, inventorying keys, and saying "Good morning, how may I help you?" a thousand times a day. I was the sixth grader stressing out about my grades because junior high grades determine which high school you get into (Catholic School world guys, not public). I was the eigth grader who got into her high school of choice freaking out over if that one "B" in English would keep me out of honors programs. I was the high schooler who had panic attacks over colleges as a sophomore. And I was the college student who went absolutely insane when Latin looked like it might delay my graduation. I've been preparing my whole life for the next step, and here I am and I don't know what it's supposed to be anymore. I don't have a career, I have a really lame job that I tell myself is just a stepping stone, but is it really? Is this what all my education and paranoia has led up to? Bottoming out in mediocrity?

Right now I'm starting grad school under the guise of taking me some place else, somewhere in which I'm challenged and I matter. Where I can be a special unique snowflake before it becomes a big mushy mass of mud with everyone else. I'm holding out hope and shelling out the money for it all aiming for that next step to something better.

But the truth is?

I think I'm lying again.