Step 50: Sick Days = Daft Punk Days

I have been sick. (Please pause here and feel bad for me.) I pretty much just laid in bed all day and Googled things and watched music videos while I drifted in and out of consciousness.

I watched all of Daft Punk's movie Interstella 5555 on Youtube. Then, since I love to repeat things, I watched my DVD of it. Best. Cartoon. Ever.

Step 49: Become A Big Shot Movie Producer

...who produces Haiku movies.

I'm back in school and learning all kinds of meaningless things. In my electronic writing class, we are learning how to use final cut pro. I made my first movie in just a shade under an hour. We had to write Haikus and then find images on Google to accompany the poems. Then I photoshopped my pictures a bit (aka I clicked random things in Photoshop-- because I don't know what any of it means-- until something I liked happened). It's all very high tech. Only master's of English like me can do this sort of thing.

So Hollywood, can you please give me my mil now so I can quit school and start watching Netflix full time?

Here's the masterpiece:

Step 48: Get Religion

I found God today between the layers of veggies and folds of cheese on a Jimmy John's sandwich. Each bite tasted like a spiritual awakening.

Step 47: The Art of Boredom

Summer vacation is a great thing in a teacher's life, but also a very complicated thing. I went from working anywhere from 60-80 hours a week (I had two jobs, P.F. Chang's and teaching) to working 20-30 hours a week. This week, I have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off from work! That's a lot of time on a girl's hands whose life has solely consisted of work for the past year. But, with a little planning, those days fly by. In order to fill worthless days of nothing, follow these easy steps:

1. Sleep late. Even though your body wants to get up at 7:30 or 8 am, don't let it. The longer you can force your body to linger in bed, the less hours you have to find things to do during the day.

2. Take your time getting ready. There's no rush when time doesn't exist for you. Try everything in your closet on until you look perfect. Listen to music while getting ready. Put on a full face of make-up. Kill as much time as possible in this stage.

3. Think of all of the potential things you could do during the day. And then make sure you space them out. You don't want to do it all at once in the morning. No, no, no. Get your eyebrows waxed in the morning. Take a break. Go to the book store. Take a break. Eat lunch. Take a break. Space out your errands to maximize time wasting.

4. Only drive scenic routes. Drive the back roads that take an extra few minutes to get wherever you are going. You may even see something new. You can learn and waste time!

5. Call everyone you know. Talking on the phone is a great waste of time. And if you call everyone you know, someone is bound to answer.

6. Watch all the movies that your boyfriends never wanted to watch with you. You know, all the Jane Austen's and episodes of Glee that you can never con anyone into seeing with you.

7. Read. Reading should be thrown in throughout the day. In step three's "breaks," reading is an excellent option. It fills time and makes you smart.

8. Wander the mall. Who knows, maybe you need something.

9. Eat your favorites. Drive to the next town over to get your favorite take-out or make a special trip to the grocery store to cook something delicious. Dinner can take six hours if you want. The longer the better.

10. Clean your house. This is the hardest part in the art of being bored. But if your house is messy like mine, and you are bored everyday like me, and never clean your house even though you are bored like me, then you will just feel bad about yourself. You have to turn off Netflix, and do the laundry and dishes. It will feel better in the long run.

Step 46: You Can't Have It All

Even though we always want it, we can't have it all; it's just not possible. And as soon as you think you're close, you'll end up with nothing. However, in these situations, nothing can be the best thing for you. Sometimes you need the universe to spit in your face, tell you that you cannot have your cake and eat it too, and then wipe your slate clean in order to really see how unfair it was to try to have more than your share of anything. But good things do still happen and will happen again to you, but maybe slowly at first. And the best part of the whole process is that we get know ourselves more completely.

Hello, New Day.

Step 45: Give to the Earth and the Earth Will Give Back

I hostessed at P.F. Chang's today. My shift started at 4:30. Not a lot of people get dinner around then, so naturally, it was slow. To keep busy, I snacked on food, wiped things down that were already clean, folded napkins, and performed other mindless tasks- basically anything to keep myself from falling asleep.

While looking for pointless chores, I noticed a small trash tornado was cycloning about on the patio. Large pieces of styrofoam had been caught in our gates along with receipts, newspapers, packing peanuts, and candy wrappers, and it was all blowing about with a bunch of dead leaves. I was mesmerized by the spinning garbage.

I decided to sweep it up. I marched outside with my broom and dustpan and began to sweep. Because the wind was blowing so fiercely, I struggled to sweep the garbage into the dust pan. I would think I finally had a trash particle in my grasp only to see it swept into the air and out of my reach. My coworkers had gathered at the door to laugh at me.

I brought in heap after heap of trash, and my fellow workers continued to taunt me. As I went back out to the patio for a final sweep, I felt pretty sheepish. I did sort of look like a trash-loving fool out here chasing this garbage around. Why was I doing this? And then, the heavens opened up and the earth paid me for services rendered. That's right, I'm talking money. I found a 10 dollar bill blowing about in the leaves. A small fortune.

Give to the earth and she will give back. And all of you butt holes at work can suck it.