Pick a State, Any State

I've been watching Craigslist like a hawk for over a year now, attempting to find the perfect place to live after college.  As it turns out, trying to find a place that a single college graduate can afford on her own and that actually allows cats is next to impossible.  I mean, I understand the risk of having someone's animals tear up your place, but seriously!  Look at this beautiful girl!

 



She hasn't torn up a single piece of furniture since I brought her home as a kitten-- she's only chewed through two cords in her year and a half of life (and both belonged to my mother- her computer mouse cord, and her cell phone charger).  Honestly, everyone who gets the chance to meet her loves her.

But seriously, I've been putting a lot of thought into where I want to be after this December and the usual list has formed in my mind:  the hometown, the college town, near the college town, Costa Rica (long story), the other side of the freaking country (another long story).  The unfortunate truth is that I will probably end up in whichever town provides me with a job.  Student loans are just around the corner, and life would be easier to figure out if I had roommate-- one that wasn't a cat and could help with rent payments.

Trying to figure out where I want to be and what I want to do is an ongoing thing, and I'm beginning to realize that it may take more than just a few months to figure out.  Heck, it takes some people years to figure out what they want to do in life.  I know that whatever I choose, it will involve the animals I grew up loving, the fiction I've been writing since I was in the fourth grade, and the horses that are my life.  Without these, I know that I won't be happy, and as much as money matters in this stupid society of ours, I know that I need to do what it takes to be happy.  I just hope that if it means moving away from home, I have the courage to do it.  For now, I've decided to just stick to working as hard as I can on my classes and the Appalachian novella I have to finish by December.  And getting my Jeep fixed.  But that's a whole different list of issues.

To Have a "Should"

As an English: Creative Writing major at a liberal arts college, the upper division English courses (both literature and creative writing) tend to have some pretty amazing discussions.  This is in part because my fellow students are fantastically bright individuals-- I never would have considered myself, my goals, and my life the way I do if not for their insight.  Another reason is that our classes do not have 300 students sitting in a lecture hall.  This semester, one of my favorite classes is turning out to be Greek Mythology, taught by one of the most mind-blowing professors I've ever had the pleasure to converse with.  Often, as I walk out this class with one of my close friends, I am still trying to wrap my mind around the concepts we just spent an hour and fifteen minutes discussing-- and not because of their irrelevance!! Rather, it is because the concepts that our professor is taking the time to introduce (and, as this is the third class I've taken of his, the time to reiterate) relates to everything:  Greek Mythology, theories of literature, psychoanalysis, social norms, relationships, everything right up to the reason we tell stories and live the way we do.

So many great quotes have come from this class.  Here are a few:

"Mortality makes human life precious."

"What is a dragon but a woman with wings?"

"Laughter happens at the moment that you've just saved yourself from the abyss...it happens at the expense of pity...it is the human expression of being freed from a social/emotional expectation."

and my personal favorite--

"Humans are different than other animals because we have a should."

We have a should.  I can explain the other quotes in a few short sentences,* but the magnitude of this last one struck me to the core when my professor said it in class last week.  We have a should- the concept that things are supposed to be a certain way, a norm that when broken, has the potential to wreck our world because we hold so much store for this little word, should.  We should not care about money, we should marry for love, we should chase our dreams as crazy as they may be, we should never give up, and we should always strive to be ourselves. 

All of these shoulds are serious considerations as I enter week four of my last semester in undergrad.  What are my dreams?  Where do I want to go?  What do I really want to do?  Who do I want to be at my side as I go through life and "fulfill" my dreams? 

Disney does a wonderful job telling us ladies when we're little what we should want in a partner and that love is always most important.  When we get in the real, grown-up world, we realize those sets of expectations are unrealistic (I'm still hoping my Prince Charming will ride up on a beautiful white horse and take me away to my horsey haven where money doesn't matter and all of my to-be novels are instant best-sellers!).  Having recently experienced the annoying truth that, as my Spanish professor said in class Monday, "Love is always temporary," I've come to the conclusion that our should, with relation to this topic, causes more problems than the number of secret princesses it saves.   (I'm not hating on Disney, by the way-- I love all of those classic fairytales.  And I love Brave with all my heart!)

What about the other shoulds though?  Where should I live after graduation in December?  What the hell should I do for a career?  Should I go for the place that gives me the most money (the American Dream, people!) or the place that makes me happiest?  These are the questions I'm considering as I decide where I plan to go from little Shepherd University in December.  And so the lists of pros and cons begin. 


*In Greek Myth, the gods were fascinated with humans because they were mortal- they were able to take risks and those risks meant something because it could end their lives- unlike the gods who were mortal.  Also, women were associated with the earth and serpents in Greek society (Read Anne Carson's "Putting her in her Place:  Woman, Dirt, and Desire" in order to understand the logic of the Greek men) while men were associated with birds.  A dragon, a serpent with wings, was seen as a woman elevated to man's status-- a great threat to the patriarchal society.  Finally, laughter was a topic of discussion when considering what jokes, stories, myths, and pity are and their associations with one another. 

Greetings from the WV Hills

I have never done any sort of blogging before, so this is a new experience for me.  I'm not a huge technology fan, but blogging is said to be good for the writer's soul, and a writer I am.  There are plenty of things going on in my life right now that I could write about-- namely that in less than three months, I will be a college graduate.  That means that in less than three months the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  will need to be answered. 

So far, the answer remains, "I have no freaking idea."

What I do know is that I have a plethora of decisions to make in the next three months, and the anxiety I feel from the weight of these decisions is not unique.  New graduates all over the United States are experiencing the exact same things I am-- I'm not alone, and this blog is primarily going to be my outlet for that anxiety.  I hope that my rants, raves, inspirational quotes (there are bound to be a ton of them if only because of the sheer number of literature classes I'm enrolled in this final semester), panic attacks, and other anecdotes can help some of you just like me.

So, to close this greeting, I will leave you with a picture (Facebook quality, I apologize) of the title of my blog:  A Girl, her Horse, and her Cat.  In the turbulence of these last three months, these two wonderful animals are my cornerstone. Ginny, my cat who is much larger now than she was in this picture, and Kit, my lovely buckskin pony, are always there for me emanating a love that only animals can give.