maniac

i'm feeling very blah right now.  it's part exhaustion, part nerves, part total uncertainty about my life.  i'm wiped from working two jobs, freaking out about waiting to hear about forensics grad school and am just generally completely over having to figure all this crap out.  i wish i was an adult already, dammit.  or at least on the road to becoming an adult.  

i almost feel like i can't even get the apartment straightened up (let alone my life) because i'm so busy trying to keep afloat.  sometimes i think that moving out of los angeles is the answer - in fact, at this point i'm almost certain that that is the answer.  life moves too fast here and there really is never enough time or money to enjoy anything.  that makes me sound like a complete whiny baby, especially considering that, all told, luke and i are living pretty well here (albeit not in a gigantic mansion by the beach).  however, the driving, the cost of living, the people whose values are like the diametric opposite of ours are all slowly sucking the life-force out of me...not to be too dramatic, of course.

i feel like for the past year i've been frantically looking for something, reaching out like a maniac for these ideals that maybe belong to someone else.  there's huge pressure here in los angeles to be a great financial success, which can be incredibly exhausting when none of your passions are all that lucrative (teachers and forensic anthropologists aren't exactly known for their wealth).  i've been working insanely hard lately just to essentially break even, which is killing me.  that's not to say i wouldn't have to work equally hard somewhere else, but i think, strangely enough, there would be more opportunities for me to achieve the things i want in a smaller city.

i want to move somewhere else and have an opportunity to actually live my life.  i don't want a house right now, but it would be nice to be able to entertain the idea someday.  (i'd have to live about three thousand years making what i make to buy a house here.)  i'd like to be able to raise my own children and wash my own car and have a garden.  i want to come home from work and not be so tired from traffic or long hours that i can't even do the dishes (although, in this dream world, i'd have a dishwasher).  

i guess my point is that i miss being an active participant in my own life.  i'm too busy.  and, the worst part is that i don't think i can be any less busy, if i'm going to continue living in l.a.  it's too expensive for me not to work and even if it wasn't, it's too soul-killing for me to stay home all day in this apartment in the middle of the urban sprawl.  i can't get anything done when i'm free at home because i want to claw at the walls i hate being so close to other apartments so much.  i loved being being at home when i lived in the 'burbs - perhaps because i could look out the window and see trees.

i'm making my life sound like a hellhole, and believe me, i understand it could be much worse.  i'm just slowly formulating an l.a. escape plan and i wanted to share some of the reasoning behind it.