What I Did On My Decade-long Vacation, Pt. II
  Here is a list of occupations that know I never want to go near again:
  Direct Marketer: I sold, of all things, cutlery, by calling people up and trying to get them to let me come to their houses and demonstrate to them how well my knives cut things. The merchandise was actually of remarkable quality, and I was marginally good at the sales bit of the whole thing, but I was so depressed and useless that I squandered both my talent and the opportunity. Plus, those motivated sales types are just fucking weird. They've got "cult" written all over their shit-eating grins.
  Coffee Shop Counter Clerk: If, by some horrible circumstance I am ever forced to work in food service again, I suppose that making cappucinos for snooty business-people is probably less horrible than, say, cleaning the grease trap at Lard Burger. There really is nothing better than coffee that was picked two weeks ago, roasted on Tuesday, ground this morning and brewed five minutes ago. Plus, I used to be able to tell you if a drink was caffeinated just by paying attention to my heart rate about 30 minutes after I drank it. Still, it involved making drinks for people willing to pay upwards of three dollars for a drink that you could arguably sip out of a large thimble. It only takes one phone call from a man who wants a large cappucino with "six and a half Equals" to make visions of scalded yuppie dance in one's head.
  Insert Stuffer: Have you ever wondered how all of those coupons and sales circulars that you never take the time to read get into the middle of the newspaper you buy? Of course you haven't. But if you had, you'd find out by reading this diatribe that there are people whose job consists of standing for eight hours collecting those materials into a wad and jamming them into the center fold of your newspaper. These positions are often filled by temp agencies, who offer these jobs to people like my 1995 self, who have no education or skills to speak of, and are willing to accept minimum wage temp jobs under the "manual labor" category.
  Video Store Clerk: Clerks was a movie. That does not mean it was fiction.

What I Did On My Decade-long Vacation, Pt. I
  After nine and a half years, I am finally a college graduate. This, of course, obligates me to pontificate on accomplishment and hard work, to modestly deflect praise, and to share with the world at large my plans for the future now that I have this long awaited credential.
  But that just wouldn't be like a bastard, would it?
  The truth is, getting my bachelor's degree has been an enormous pain in the ass. It's taken me since 1993 to make it happen, due in nearly equal measure to unfortunate circumstance and my own drastic lack of maturity.
  I went to college right out of high school, not because I had any clear goals or even intentions, but because that's what I was supposed to do. I was at least marginally intelligent, and I had no trade skills or inately marketable talents, such as a great singing voice or fabulous breasts. So I went to college. I decided to major in broadcasting, but again I didn't have a good reason. I picked it because that's what my best high school friend was going to study. At a completely different school.
  So there I was, at an expensive private school in the Pennsylvania mountains, with a very large loan and a commandeered major. What did I do? What any young man who is laying the foundations for his future career would have done in my position. I fucked around for two years. I approached my studies with the same self-interested apathy that I'd displayed in high school; just good enough to not get myself in trouble, but never ever within even shouting distance of my potential. I let my personal life steer everything else in my sphere of influence. After my second year, when the school decided that they didn't want to give me all that financial aid after all, I left with a C- minus GPA and a heart that I'd let be broken in a most pathetic manner. The only bright spot of that experience, the friends I had left, assured me that we'd stay in touch. We didn't, of course, and this has set a pattern of drift that I've maintained through this very moment.
  After leaving college, I suddenly realized with an urgency bordering on obsession that all I really wanted to be was a college student. I still didn't know why, mind you, but there was a decided fervor in the desire that was matched only by my ambivalence for my ex-girlfriend. In order to work toward the first real goal I'd ever set for myself, I did just that. I worked. In my next entry, I will detail for you my adventures as remarkably unskilled laborer.