last thursday my boss sent me out to San Berdo to turn in a proposal. and it made me happy.

for the first sixty miles of the trip, i only thought about two things: number one, that i was happy to be away from my windowless cube; and number two, that once i pay off Marla Singer (in less than two years, mind you!) and the college tuition i still owe my parents, i will be free to do whatever i want to do with life. i could go to grad school---i was thinking of getting a masters in environmental or geotech engineering or something green-related. my school choices? pomona or san jose or berkeley (i know, very ambitious, but i also thought maybe they'd accept me because i'm a girl. i think uci accepted me for the same reason. i'm not incredibly smart.) and then i thought it could lead me to a different career path, which i wouldn't mind at all. or i could go on a sabbatical. my sabbatical would most likely consist of three things: number one, i would not be in america; number two, i would not be doing anything engineering-related; and number three, i would spend my time making a difference in other people's lives. but what difference would i be making? i haven't gotten that far into planning yet because first of all, how do you know how you'd be impacting people's lives until you do it? the answer is there's no way to know.

the sixty miles drive back, i only thought of one thing: i wanted to be a farmer. i recently saw Stephen Colbert on cable news, and i guess i sort of got inspired by it. he was saying how he got to be a farmer for four days, and he was harvesting beans and packing beans and please don't ever make him go back to being a farmer ever again. i kept imagining myself being a farmer and harvesting and packing food for people to eat, and they'd just keep eating the food on their plates, not thinking about where it came from or whose hands made it happen, and that maybe i was the one who picked it and packed it. most people take most things for granted. i know i do it. i was thinking, maybe if i experienced that kind of hardship, i would be more aware of such basic things as food and develop a greater appreciation of how good i got it now. and then i would write a book about a jaded fake engineer who became a farmer. how cool and awesome that would be! so i told The Samurai about it, and he said i couldn't/wouldn't really do it.

but i guess i'm only looking for ways to distract me from this crap hole of a daily grind. none of this might actually happen. i find refuge in the mere thought that all this could one day disappear, and i would once again be excited to welcome the next morning again. but for now, Nirvana will be on repeat.