I start training for a new job next week.

It’s a temp-to-hire position in customer service. The company I hope will hire me after training has controls the stock options of several companies and I will be helping their shareholders who call in with questions or needing advice.

So it’s still not related to anything I want to do in the long-term but it pays $10/hr and I will be working full time so I can hopefully be much less worried about money in the near future. It also helps that I will be getting paid weekly.

I’m going to try to work game days (i.e. Saturdays) at Freebirds because I do really like the people and the atmosphere and once my interview went well at this new place I realized that I didn’t want to quit. I just also couldn’t turn down the opportunity for a non-minimum wage job with student loan repayment looming.

And when I told the general manager at Freebirds about the job and my change in availability as a result she asked me, “So, is this what you’ve been waiting for?” She also asked me what I wanted to do/was going to do with my degree. But I don’t know the answer to the second one.

I also don’t know the answer to the first, really. What am I waiting for? It’s been very clear to me that all this summer I’ve been waiting for something. Was it a roommate? An apartment? A “real” job?

I have all those things now.

Or is it something else?

What am I waiting for and how do I know?

I haven’t started a journal article from my thesis yet. I haven’t done much writing aside from this blog, really.

I have these ideas for what I want to do with my life.

But how do I do it instead of just thinking about it?

What am I waiting for?

I don’t know.

But I do know that life is hard and balance is difficult and I’m trying my best. I hope that once I get started in the routine of this new job I will be able to start planning for the future. My immediate plan was to save money and pay off my loans and to not have to be in school for a little while.

But I don’t want to loose sight of what it is that I ultimately want and end up stuck here because it’s convenient to not leave. I’m going to look up PhD programs to apply for for next fall as well as checking out programs like Teach for America or maybe re-evaluating whether there are any paid internships in American theatre.

In the meantime, I am going to attempt to do yoga and go on walks and cook better food and get around to those crafting and writing projects. We’ll see how it goes.

I do know I’m much less stressed out now that there is hope for things to get better financially.

Money may not buy happiness, but being a step further away from destitution certainly helps me sleep easier.