i am depressed today. i have decided that it is too much to rely on my jobs. there's got to be something else, something to keep us afloat that won't cause this much anxiety. hard to convince myself that no one is perfect at their jobs or maybe that's just something i'd like to be able to convince myself. is it because no one ever speaks of their mistakes that i don't see them and inevitably aspire to so much greater than what i actually am? tell myself i am the fool for falling for that trap, i am the fool for eating it all up. but so much rests upon a steady living, a stable job that i cannot possibly try to care less about it. it is important whether my jobs saves a life or pays a bill or eases one minute of one person's day. and so i beat myself up for it and damn near pray that things are gonna be alright. can't help but imagine losing everything we have because i was an idiot. can't help but imagine us fighting off the poverty that puts people down and keeps 'em down. seen too many a bum, too many a struggling single mother, too many a starving college student to withstand the thought of it for even just one second. there has got to be something else. how do other people do it? how do other people bring in the big money, pay for their suburbans and five bedroom houses in the suburbs while sipping their mocha lattes and complaining about their children's school curriculum? how do other people manage to juggle all these life responsibilities and not collapse under them? car payments and mortgages. $10,000 engagement rings and cable tv. family nation cell phone plan w/ unlimited texting and a closet full of designer clothing. a cruise to alaska or scuba diving in hawaii. and we deserve all of this because of course we're good workers. we do our job and we do it well. the companies we work for could not survive without us. or at least that's what we tell ourselves to avoid confronting the fact that really, we're expendable. what's well-paid honest, hard work compared to fresh-out-of-college, eager-to-please, cheap labor? a company fires you, they can always hire another. just give me one reason, one reason to kick you out and hire someone else. because, who am i kidding? i never got along with anyone i worked with nor did i even have anything in common with them.

female, white, middle-class, college senior

um, new layout. a lot less creative. postings will still probably be pretty infrequent. started school on monday after 3 years off. what do i call myself? a freshman? a senior? is it relative to your accumulated credit hours (i have over 150)? or is it where you stand in your program of study? if the latter, i guess i am a freshman. at 24, going on 25 next month. my fcs/psych teacher touched a little bit on the statistics of students at the university of utah versus other universities mostly located out-of-state. not so surprisingly, more students are married, have children, and either a part/full-time job at the u than other universities. he compared students at other universities to freshmen as, in a manner, free of responsibility. all those students have to worry about is passing their classes and "trying not to die." um, well, considering that i am married, i have a daughter, and i work 51 hours a week (only 40 hours of which i admit to at school lest they give me that parental glare, immediately shifting from a more or less relaxed conversation to one of consternation and disapproval), it would be contradictory to term myself a freshman. just as i often find it contradictory, even unfair, to classify myself as part cherokee. live the life of deprivation and discrimination (although encountered from the position of a female in this paternal society) and only then, from what i understand of american indian history, might i prescribe to it, claim it as my own heritage. and it is not ever that i can go back.