wallflower.

I am not a student.

I have been thinking a lot about school lately; I marvel at my friends and acquaintances that have attained multiple degrees - regular people with normal hobbies and senses of humor, who found the gumption and focus to complete law school, medical school, or have their doctorate in this or that or something or the other.

It's not that I was a bad student. I take that back. It's not that I made bad grades. I didn't. But I was a bad student. I had bad study habits. I rarely read for class. I crammed for tests. And I never actually understood why I was doing it all anyway.

I am thinking of this because I am back at that place again. You know? The one where you question every decision you are making, the biggest question being why you can't actually make much of a decision as all.

I watched Bobby on Sunday, my lazy day. Well, most of my days have an element of laziness to them. Sunday is just privileged enough to carry a designation. Back to Bobby.

As described by IMBD:

"Tuesday, June 4, 1968: the California presidential primary. As day breaks Robert Kennedy arrives at the Ambassador Hotel; he'll campaign, then speak to supporters at midnight. To capture the texture of the late 1960s, we see vignettes at the hotel: a couple marries so he can avoid Vietnam, kitchen staff discuss race and baseball, a man cheats on his wife, another is fired for racism, a retired hotel doorman plays chess in the lobby with an old friend, a campaign strategist's wife needs a pair of black shoes, two campaign staff trip on LSD, a lounge singer is on the downhill slide. Through it all, we see and hear RFK calling for a better society and a better nation."

I watch things like this, and I am reminded that the world consists of more than just myself; There is more to a good day than self fulfillment, and the hope that everything will go my way. I think of these things, and I know I should be doing more with the other six days of my week, the ones that carry no official designation.

I have talked about settling before. This is different than that. I think it's important for humanity to, in a sense, refrain from making life directing decisions based on social expectation. The answer to the question, "what do you do?" needs not an impressive, expensive or well-educated answer. Just an honest one.

And when I ask myself, "Meredith, what do you do?" I don't really like the honest answer that I give as a reply, not because of social expectation or a need to be impressive, but because I know I am capable to contributing more fully to the kind of world that the late senator hoped for.

When I get to these points of dissatisfaction that demand change, my mind lingers toward the school I talked about earlier...Furthering my education EVEN more. Though it makes sense on a few levels, the image I get in my head is me, in the form of a skinny and soaking wet cat, swimming forcefully upstream, going against my natural strengths - like jumping out of trees onto land - and instead, fighting a forceful current in a foreign environment.

Last night on the radio, while driving to pick up my pad thai that would likely make my day more ideal, I heard a seventeen year-old Texas girl talk about the two years she spent selling her body for money, between fifteen and the age she is now. I had to get out of the car to eat my food at the part of the story where she had to pull the razor from beneath her tongue to cut the man that had began to hit her. "I cut him and then ran out of the room," she said, as I turned off my car's engine, went into my well heated apartment, read articles online, and ate my dinner.

To quote the lyrics of the blue eyed Jacob Dylan:

I seen the sun comin' up at the funeral at dawn
The long broken arm of human law
Now it always seemed such a waste
She always had a pretty face
So I wondered how she hung around this place

Hey, come on try a little
Nothing is forever
There's got to be something better than
In the middle

Something is just a little off when I think of the whole of my life, and how I occupy my time. The poor girl I talked about above...There are so many people, so many systems, so many life promises, failing her.

I had a customer the other day tell me that I am probably not giving myself enough credit, because it's a blessing for her to come down every morning from her hotel room in the five-star Mayo and see a friendly smile on my face. Woopty doo. I am offering a friendly smile to a group of somewhat wealthy attorneys, who are currently defending Tyson foods and the lawsuit against their chicken's waste that runs into Oklahoma's fresh water. I don't want to fool myself into thinking that this gives my life meaning. I gain no comfort from my friendly attitude offered to the privileged, with the image of the desperate girl in the back of my head, smoking pot and popping ecstasy tablets to get herself through her first night on the job.

Must find a way out of the comfortable middle.