Utsa3073dwjournal's Weblog

Another week…

utsa3073dwjournal — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 04:28:22 +0000

This week went without anything exciting. I tried getting a car, and had the harsh realization that without the willingness of my parents to cosign the financing loan my first car, I wasn’t going to get one, not from a dealership, not from Carmax, not from anyone.

Needless to say, I’m not getting a car anytime soon.

So after getting over that my parents either: A) Are stingy, B) poor, C) don’t believe I can pay that money back, or D) hate me.

While i don’t believe they hate me, the first 3 choices don’t sound so farfetched. I’m literally stuck bumming rides for the next month or so, realisically. So I’ll see what the next week brings. I essentially left two car dealers hanging, my friends are still scheming to get me cars, and I’m sure that the car of my dreams is long gone. Depressing to say the least.

A week in solitude…

utsa3073dwjournal — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:34:16 +0000

So this week I was grounded. Figures that a 21 year old can still be grounded but that’s the way it is for me. With parents that still lay down the ground rules and every other rule that they might have missed, it’s no surprise that I still get punished for missing curfew. Well, my friends are surprised a lot. They wonder why I’m still being treated like I’m 15… well because it’s their house, I always say. And while that’s true, I think the only way I’ll “escape” is if I get my own place, which realistically speaking, is out of the picture for me. Me and everyone else knows it. I’ve been saving – or spending sparingly – for the better part of year so far, and I’ve got over $1000 saved up. Sooner or later I’ll have to take the plunge and get my own car. My only obstacle thus far is the driving test I keep avoiding for some odd reason… mainly because I bombed the parallel parking part and wasn’t even allowed to continue the test… embarassing as that may sound. But really I have no one to blame for my lack of a car but myself. I’ll be getting paid this week and afterwards I would like to take my test and be done with it, so I can move on to the actual buying of the car… But we’ll see how it goes.

As for being grounded, I’ve been spared of the the presence of my friends for almost a week now, save for my co-workers and those I see at school. Word got out pretty fast that I was grounded for staying 2 hours past curfew, and it doesn’t get any less embarassing. This isn’t the first time I’ve been talked about as the jailbird. And while it sucks, somewhere deep inside me there’s this voice that keeps saying that I’m benefitting from all of this no-tolerance martial law in some way or another. I think it shows.

Like for instance at work, my supervisors know that we aren’t supposed to mop before we close our doors at Starbucks in the Westin hotel because it looks like we’re closing early and trying to shake off guests. And some nights they do it anyway. So when my supervisor went off to do some work, I was left to mop “early.” Needless to say, I was stupid nervous of what might happen if I were caught. Is this fear from my upbringing? Why am I so nervous to go out there and live a little. I don’t like to drink, parties aren’t my thing, and living on the edge only seems to get me in trouble.

Well, I know that these answers are sure to find their way to me somehow, but the best thing for me to do now is to get to sleep. Don’t want to stay up too late past my curfew.

Ugh…

utsa3073dwjournal — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:58:42 +0000

So I’m upstairs as my friends wait for me to go with them to whatever my brother wants to do. Another year has passed in my brother’s life and I’m being yelled at. Not a lot has been accomplished this week, Spring Break was a bust. Looking my brother’s life at this point, I realize that he’s going down the same path of putting things off like I did at his age (he’s three years younger than I). I should tell him to be more proactive with his life, but then I’d seem like that parent who wants better for his kid because they didn’t succeed themselves. And he’s even lazier than I am. Doomed, much?

Spring Break… horray…

utsa3073dwjournal — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 04:47:00 +0000

So it’s spring break, and I’ve reached that point in my life where it doesn’t excite me as much as it did as a kid. I find myself working… pretty much all week. Working at a Starbucks in a hotel, you see all the kids who DO have spring break off, and you have to serve them coffee. I had a rough night tonight. We were slammed most of the day, and especially during the last 30 minutes… which sucked. I started telling my parents about my woes, and they said “Dante’s finally growing up and realizing that Spring Break means nothing.”

Not the way I want to look at it, but they’re right. I’ve still got school work, I work all week, save for the weekend, and I’m still without my car. Sounds just like any other week minus actually going to school.

I’ll have to chalk this up as one of the not so great epiphanies in my life.

So this week…

utsa3073dwjournal — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:14:19 +0000

On my quest to be a better person, this week didn’t register too high on the accomplishment meter. I managed to get absolutely nothing done…. What a letdown.

That box, still there.

My taxes, still gotta do them.

My license and car, still don’t have it.

And on top of everything else, I tried the driving test, and I epically failed. Didn’t even leave the parking lot. I can’t parallel park… wasn’t even close. So to put things into perspective, I’m lazy and can’t do the things I set out to do… very depressing. We’ll see how this week goes as far as getting things done. I highly doubt I’ll like the result.

So yeah… I neglect my grandparents.

utsa3073dwjournal — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:16:11 +0000

In the long list of things to do to better myself, one of them is to prioritize. I can’t expect to get anything done if I don’t put some importance behind them. So I’m trying to get my stuff straight this week (I mean THIS WEEK), and I’m mentally making a list in my head of things to do. As I’m making mental notes, a task appears in my head. It involves a box that’s been sitting in my front room for the past 3 months. and the thing is, it belongs to my grandparents…

So here’s the story. I’m scrambling for Christmas gifts with about 2 weeks left, and I’m shopping at Costco with my parents. I have NO IDEA what to get my grandparents. As we’re walking past the kitchenware and heading towards the power tools, my Dad spots an awesome lamp set at the end of the aisle. He suggests I get them that. I, having not one picky bone in my body when it comes to gifts for others, immediately snag it. I even call my grandparents that day and tell them I have a gift picked out for them. At this point, I’m feeling pretty good as a grandson.

Christmas rolls around and it’s sitting there in the front. I figure that since I’m broke and everything I’d hold on mailing it out to them until I get my next paycheck. Then a couple weeks pass and it’s already time for school. Still sitting in the front room is the lampset. Now my excuse is that I’m too busy with school and work to find time to go to the post office. While that’s true, I could actually nag my parents into taking me early on Monday and mailing it it then… That hasn’t happened for a good two months, and personally I feel terrible about it.

So this week, I’m making it a crucial priority to go out on MONDAY MARCH 3, 2008 to go and mail this sucker to my grandparents with a handwritten apology. I don’t care if I have to bus myself over to the nearest post-office. Hopefully they won’t let me feel too guilty.

utsa3073dwjournal — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:04:23 +0000

Not a lot of progress this week. I had a few exams. All of them were pretty time consuming. But when I wasn’t thinking of exams or how bad I was going to do in them, I’ve been thinking about what technical communication is. I mean, one of my classes is editing, and while it’s all well and good to have good grammar in your writing, I’ve been thinking: “Is this really want I want to do for the rest of my life? Correcting papers and manuals?”

I’ll have to delve deeper in this to get a better for myself…

utsa3073dwjournal — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:28:34 +0000

Well work is work as usual… A lot has been going on at my job, so much so that I almost lose track of everything. The same ol same ol. Well all of this is for the big prize:

Here’s my plan:

1. Get my license. Can’t do any car hunting without a license.

2. Find a car close to or exactly like my target car. While it’s easy to pick out a car, it’s hard to find one that has decent mileage.

3. Save save save my money. I’ve been trying to live off of 50 dollars a week while working like crazy. My biggest problem has been money managing… I love to spend.

4. Work the deal. My friends have been telling me a lot about how shark-like salesman can be. I appreciate their advice, but at some point I’m going to have to start making some decisions for myself.

5. Drive Away. Hopefully at this point I’m not 50 years old. I want to have a car by the end of the month, but a few setbacks have pushed that target date a couple of weeks. I really need this car, so now’s as good a time as ever to act.

My Week

utsa3073dwjournal — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:02:28 +0000

Well this is my first stab at a blog, so I guess I’ll just make this as simplistic as possible.

This week has been anything but stellar. I’ve had trouble making it to both my classes and work, I’ve been short on cash all up until yesterday, and I’ve found myself stuck with nothing to do about it all. Why? Because I lack the one essential thing that could solidify my independence. My own car.

This one object has eluded me for the longest time, for the better part of 3 years (going on four). I’ve been at the mercy of public transportation and bummed rides from friends and family. And I can’t really blame anyone for this but myself. Until recently I haven’t really been all that active in pursuing my own car. And after talking with my friends, I’ve realized that I haven’t really done anything proactively for myself. My problem is that I just sit around and wait for things to happen, for things to just fall in my lap. How can expect to get anything done in life by doing that? And right now, because of all this, I’m struggling to maintain other areas of my life.

Ever since summer vacation, I’ve been really concerned with two things: work and school. I remember my first couple of weeks at work, one of my supervisors gave me a really bad work schedule, and I talked to him about it, saying that I had no car, and I depended on others to get me from place to place. I even told him that I was going to get a car by the end of summer. almost 9 months later, here I am in the same position, without a license, without a car, and without any progress. Well I can’t say that I have no progress. I have been learning to drive (AGAIN) and I getting more comfortable behind the wheel. My only problem now is, I can’t seem to find the time to take the test.

Okay, time out.

Another problem that I just realized — the real problem — is that I seem to make obstacles for myself. If it’s not the fact that I have no time, it’s the fact that I don’t know how to parallel park yet, or the fact that I have work in the morning and I’d be too tired to take the test. How am I supposed to make it through life when I’m stopping myself from doing anything. Instead I’m here blaming everyone else but myself. My friends are helping me look for a car, and I’m just waiting for them to do the work. Just like with school, I’m just waiting for this major to work out for me, when in all honesty I don’t know what technical communication is (despite going to Career Services twice) or what I want to do with this degree.

I feel like I want to scream right now, but instead I’m going to start a checklist of things that I need to do before this semester is over with. I’m good with tasks if I have an organized set of dates that I can go to everyday. If I want to be a better person, I need to take that first step and be more proactive with my own life instead of sitting around while the world passes me by. And honestly, I’m afraid that this is too ambitious for lazy-ol’-me, that after hyping myself up with this blog that I’ll just go back to the excuse-making slouch that really hates to do anything that I don’t understand anything about. This reminds me of myself when I don’t want to do anything; I’ll find myself stuck to my bed staring at the wall or on the floor watching TV, when I know I have things to do. I know I have to do them, but I can’t will myself to pry myself from the clutches of my sheets or pull my eyes away from the sports highlights that I saw an hour ago. When really, it’s as easy as taking a step. One step leads to another, and soon I’ve done my task and it was as simple as that.

Just take the step Dante. As easy as one step.