Summer Interns and Quarter-Life Musings

So last week was the last week our office had interns for the summer.  None of them are going back to school just yet, some next week, some the week after, some sometime in September.  It got me thinking back to my interning days.  Making money was nice, but there was nothing nicer than having that week or couple of free days prior to traveling back to college for the fall - I would always think about my co-workers and employers, "Man, what suckers!"  Now I'm that sucker.

In my few days after ending my tenure at my internship I would always think about issues I'd left unresolved.  Hence, my "suckers" comments - the co-workers and employers were left with the inevitable and interminable shit left in my wake.  "Sucks to be them", I thought.  Now I am them.

Guess what.  Yes, it fucking sucks.

Responsibility is a fucking drag man.  I am in a place in my life where I have responsibilities.  "I don't wanna grow up, I wanna be a Toys 'R' Us Kid" - you bet you're ass I do.  It got me thinking about freedom and responsibilities, and where that ratio peaked in my life.

I'm going to say it peaked in 2003-2004.  My freshman-sophomore years of college.  I had more freedom than I have now, and I had pretty much nothing to take seriously.  I had 169 credits of college to look forward to completing, so basically anything I did in school gave me credits towards a degree.  Didn't really matter what back then.  Home in the winters I'd work a bit, make some cash, get drunk.  The ratio of freedom to responsibility was like 900:1.

Another good time was High School, but my freedom was significantly reduced - so were my responsibilities. High School was a breeze, but the freedom to responsibility ratio was a bit more in line with what you'd assume.  My freedom was almost directly tied to my responsibilities - do my homework, I had free time.  Take care of my shit, I had free time.  I didn't have bills, I just had to be places and do things - going through the motions.

The end of college stressed me out a bit more with responsibilities than I'd have liked.  My friends in architecture all joked that "D's get degree's", but we had an unfortunate attribute called diligence.  I had bills and I accrued debts - mostly to my father, but debts nonetheless.

Now I have responsibilities out the wazoo, I barely have enough time to myself to think, let alone enjoy myself, and I get compensated with shit.  My freedom-responsibility ratio is like 1:900 - fuck me.

In High School my song of choice to represent life was Zebrahead's "Someday".  Now?  Probably Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Someday Never Comes".  Hopefully someday I'll be able to say my song of choice to represent life is The Rolling Stone's "Brown Sugar", but I'm getting married in about 2 months, so yeah, I have a pretty small window for that to be the case...

...that is, unless, I join the mob, snag me a gumar.  It could happen.