Self-Commitment

Well, I'm now onto week 2 of my diet, 'cause I'm sick and tired of being fat. However, I have another ulterior motive to dieting, aside from the obvious "losing weight": I want to prove to myself that I have willpower. The willpower to do not what is easy, but what is right.

I say this because I want to go back to school again, maybe with a change in major, but I'm incredibly wary because I'm already $20k in debt and barely keeping my head above the proverbial water to pay for my lack of willpower.

What happened?

I was a smart kid all through school, and it made me lazy. I never studied but still got A's, wrote papers at the last minute, that kind of thing. I also just suffered my way through my depression and anxiety issues on my own.

But the stress of moving to a college dorm for the first time in my life simply magnified those issues. I was in a strange place with no friends or family, and having to get used to having to find my way around without a car. Going grocery shopping may not seem like a big deal...until you have to spend most of your day to do it. It was an hour, one-way, to go to Wal-Mart. Way different from "30 minutes if you hit every traffic light and get stuck behind a tractor on the road".

It was essentially a mental illness clusterfuck. Coupled with a program of study I thought I'd like but didn't really, I ended up wasting two years and $20,000. The main reason I went to this school is because they have a good Japanese language program, however, they didn't have a Bachelor's of Japanese, instead the closest they had was Asian Studies, which includes a bunch of history, religion, and whatnot. I absolutely love the language courses...not so much the rest.

So if I can stick to this diet thing and get into at least a "less-round" shape, I'll consider taking out yet more student loans and trying this again. Their Computer Information Systems degree looks interesting, and not too much programming, and I could always minor in Japanese.

The "Kodak Moment" Allure

So, I don't really know if any of you caught my undertones of it, but I consider myself "childfree". My viewpoint on the whole deal is kids are great, just not for me.

Now, though, I'm kind of starting to understand what it is that makes some people absolutely baby-crazy. I'm the oldest of three girls, and my just-slightly-younger-than-me sister had a baby back in March. Because she works and her husband is in the military (getting sent to Fort Hood after Thanksgiving), often my mother, other sister, and I help out with the babysitting. So in a sense, I'm almost a sort of part-time mom for my niece.

So although I've seen my niece in the throes of a screaming fit, I've never had to put up with the getting up at three in the morning for feeding. And honestly, it's an experience I'm glad to do without. I enjoy getting to help spoil her, and there's a certain satisfaction in getting her to sleep when she's been fighting it.

But I cannot imagine giving up my entire life for the 'joys of motherhood' because although there are joys, there's also plenty of tears, screaming, poo, and vomit. Some people accept this and harbor no illusions that everything will be perfect all the time. These are the mothers I respect. But some people want to have a baby as a fashion accessory, not understanding it's not as easy as some parents can make it look. There's a domineering pressure in the media that the only way for a woman's life to be complete is to have a baby. I wish that more people would just think before they have a baby. Let it be something you do when the time is right...if you even want to at all. I refuse to have a baby of my own because, at least at this point in my life, I would only resent him or her and that wouldn't be fair.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is....THINK. It won't kill you.