A master's candidate no longer

So now that school is over, am I whiling away the daylight hours with fruitless but entertaining pursuits? Yes. I am. I've rented 5 movies in the past 36 hours and I actually watched all of them. 3 were known quantities (Love Actually, Mean Girls, Mask of Zorro), and the other 2 were not the pieces of total crap they were made out to be (Day After Tomorrow, Stepford Wives). They were totally predictable, but they were also very entertaining: for Day After Tomorrow, ya gotta respect a guy who manages to make weather look dramatic, even if the story was a somewhat self-righteous clone of Independence Day. And for Stepford Wives, Nicole Kidman's hot. And Christopher Walken is Christopher Walken.

Actually I've been watching these at night, because I've spent the majority of recent daylight hours asleep. But contrary to whatever it might look like (namely, that I'm super lazy), in fact, I'd be far more given to productivity if it weren't for two things: 1. The high today was 25 degrees. With wind. Shudder. (At least it was sunny.) But that kind of weather still wouldn't make me do much more than flinch if it weren't for the fact that 2. I'm sick again. I'm totally blaming the last six months of illness on the flu vaccine shortage, despite the fact that what I have now is the first thing I've had that looks like the flu. Whatever. The point is, my immune system has it in for me. I don't even know how to write the sound of frustration I emit when I think of that... it's garbled by the cough drops anyway.

I have to admit, though, that I haven't yet settled the debate with myself on whether or not I would be doing stuff if I weren't sick. I'm pretty sure I would have made it to the gym, but the getting up early idea probably doesn't hold much water. (I totally messed up my sleep schedule with that all-nighter on Friday... the irony of pulling an all-nighter for the first time this quarter at a time when I didn't even have to still gets to me.) But see, this is how I'm coping with not being in school anymore. My life is a to do list (and at times a to avoid list), and not having any more group projects simply means that the stuff on the list has changed. Now it's all things to do with packing up and leaving Chicago. The prospect of arriving in LA in February looms because there will be no to do list--"get a job" is not a list. It's an order. I'm better at it now, but knowing where to begin on a task that big and important is kind of frightening. I have leads now, but what if I have none then? No direction, save geographic preference, to guide my search? I'll be living with my parents, broke, and in denial about not being on vacation anymore.

...Yeah, I'm not actually that negative. I'm not really concerned about my ability to find a place I like in white collar society. The prospect of looking is scary, but I have this absurd sense of confidence that everything will be fine. I'll find a job, I'll find an apartment, and I'll experience self-sufficient financial solvency for the first time. It's a challenge that I'm looking forward to, actually.