do you remember those career tests we used to take in high school? there was a website we had to go to and answer bunches of behavioural and career related questions that told you the kind of direction you should go in for your job. the more questions you answered, the more "right" your choices were. of course, you could fudge it so that the job you really wanted came in the top five. but that's not the point. the point is that i remember taking those tests all the time and being so excited for what my future held. but now it's here and i feel like i am drowning. this seems to be the normal response post-graduation, post-whatever-else-you-want-to-say, but i am not always about doing things normally. i did the things i wanted to do and now i am twenty-two, at a job that pays my bills and frantically worrying about whether or not i should apply to grad school. the clock is ticking away and i find myself wondering if it's actually worth it. perhaps moving to toronto next summer and getting a job is better because of the freedom to do whatever i want is possible for me. i can increase my osap payments, which i did, and knock off the time they estimated it would take to pay my loan, which i have and three years is gone with just eighty-five extra dollars a month. i am going to austin, texas next september for the austin city limits musical festival and it's the tenth anniversary of it so it will probably be amazing. new york in two weeks (TWO WEEKS!), vegas in february, and i owe my gal in england a transatlantic flight at some point soon. but i applied to college, kind of want to get accepted because it will be different and new, and want the safety net that extra few years of education will provide me when i go to actually be a journalist. i need the net. a net. some kind of reassurance. and so i worry some more and look up jobs, get stomach aches when i think about being rejected from ryerson, perhaps being rejected from every other place and ponder what it is that i truly want. i want want want want want want want that. for now. because at least the distraction will make me happy for a time and i will not be just stuck here in this awful place. this sounds a lot like whining, which if you see it that way, then i agree, but it's mostly one of those stream of consciousness rambles that i like to have with everyone but my family. you see, they don't actually know how to handle anything and so, when i broach subjects like this for advice, i get nothing. but when they need to bitch about law school or their jobs, i am expected to sit there and listen. this is me raging about it. so i talk to you because who else am i going to talk to about this? who, i ask you, who? that apartment over uptown 21 sure is looking good right about now, even though it is over a restaurant.