Thursday=summer blog day! A
life lesson a week keeps the doctor away, or something like that. (11:41pm is still Thursday, step 1 to completing blog once a week on Thursdays goal-complete).
With ending my sophomore
year of pre-med/Biochem classes, the hardest year of my undergraduate degree, I
think I should feel much more accomplished than I do. Instead of feeling
empowered, I feel like a run-down disgrace of a student. I’m sick and taking
antibiotics, exhausted, confused, and headed back to work here in Seattle in
five hours. I drove my car back from California yesterday. Celicia made it! Her
second successful trip between California and Washington was just as smooth as
the first. By smooth I do not mean floating in an Escalade smooth, I mean smooth
as in no problems like a truly unfortunate member of my family would have had.
Celicia is anything but smooth, she bumps with the road and buzzes along like a
little race car, but not as cool. I love summer. Celicia must know that because
it felt like summer the whole trip, with the heater stuck on. Who doesn’t love
a constant stream of warm air right in their face?
Yesterday was my 20th
birthday and I had such an amazing day. Any day that includes accidental Asian
jokes in places like nail salons and sushi restaurants, misunderstandings about
how similar “I just ripped ass” and “Man that guy ate fast” sound, and quality
friend time is a day I feel blessed to be a part of.
On a completely related note
to ass and birthdays, I am coming to realize I don’t like to instigate conflict.
However once in the midst of conflict, bring it on, I just don’t want to start
it. Thank you Momma Annabelle for the very obvious comment of “Uh, Chelsea, who
does?” Good point Annabelle, good point. Annabelle 1, Chelsea 0.
When I started writing this post,
I was, and still am, in the process of deciding where to spend my summer. When
my mom heard I was blogging she said, “Oh gosh is it a rant? Great”. No this is
not a rant, its more of a discussion, or a disagreement, with myself. On one
hand, I have Seattle with a great but gamble of a job and I have family.
However Santa Barbara holds the key to my heart where I have been offered a job
and a great (cheap) place to live. My hopes in writing about this, which
happens often when I write, is that I will walk away from this knowing more of
where my heart truly lies on one side of the decision. In making this decision,
I have been consulting a lot of people. I love talking through things and
listening to perspectives in decision-making and have done quite the amount of
talking and listening. The other thing I would love is input from my readers,
if you have a thought on this please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email on the
email above!
In Santa Barbara I have a
job offer that should make me enough money to live, and save about $3000 for
living during the school year. I would also get to be in sunny California near
most of my friends, a boyfriend, and a beach. A summer of surf and work would
be in future. On the other side of the spectrum I have Seattle, with family, a
few friends, a chance to put away more money but only a gamble. The first
summer at the restaurant I usually return to I made around $10,000. The second
summer I walked away with $5,000. This summer the weather is supposed to be
good, meaning more money than last, however the restaurant business is risky and
so is the weather in Seattle.
As the days to make a
decision about draw to a close and I start the process of accepting my nanny
position to lock in moving, my last prayer is that my parents begin to respect
the decision I will end up making about this. Unfortunately for me, I am bull
headed enough to stand firm on decisions even against my parents. As they said
today in our discussion, “That trait alone will get you far in life, but it
will also cause you to make a lot of mistakes”. I’m good at making mistakes. It’s
a terrible thing to be good at.
It saddens me to think of
what I will miss out on over the summer here in Seattle. I will miss my dad’s
40th birthday (young, right?), time with my siblings, and soccer
games. Despite all of that, my heart is in California. If I could pick up my
family (figuratively) and take them with me to California my heart would be
complete. But as I know I have discussed before, I have two lives, one here in
Seattle and one in California. The gap is growing wider and after spending a
total of 18 months in California, I don’t know that I could live here for 4
months. I wish the chance of more money and family was enough to keep me for
that amount of time. Seattle is where I grew up, not where I currently reside,
and not where I feel at home anymore.
One of the biggest ideas
swaying me into leaving early is that money is no longer of the highest value
in my life. At one point I was working an insane amount, supervising a
restaurant at 17 years old, and in search of money to spend; also successfully
making money to spend. These are growing pains because my priorities are
changing, I’m changing, and I’m doing it from two states away from my family. I
also call this time in my life a time of growing pains because it hurts. It is
painful to leave where you grew up for good, and painful to hurt your family in
the process. It breaks my heart to break my parents’ hearts, but yet another
thing I am unfortunately good at.
If I could redo this whole
process of living in California for the summer I would have told my family
months ago I was thinking about not being in Seattle for the summer. I made the
mistake of saying nothing until heading back up to Seattle. I have never
regretted going to school two states away, and would not trade the two years
I’ve had in California for anything, but I am so jealous of the people that
have family within hours of driving. It takes me hundreds of dollars and a
plane trip, or two days of a road trip, to get to my family. Because of that, I
made a home away from home, which is now winning out over my home.
I am not only learning
lessons in honesty but also on bringing up the difficult things in life. I want
to keep the peace, as does anyone, but that is a downfall in most situations.
Sometimes hard, lose-lose decisions must be made and uncomfortable topics must
be talked about, but this is part of a life worth living.
