Yes, I got a job! I was so down on myself on not being able to find employment - I type 115 WPM (which not everyone can do) and STILL couldn't find anything or the longest time - but I finally did succeed in getting a job!

I'm working at a Wendy's and it's absolutely perfect - I won't have to work too many hours, which is good since I'm still in school, and I won't make enough money to affect my financial aid. I just need a little extra cash to make ends meet, and some work experience to list on my resume after I graduate next May. I have a friend that worked at this same place for two years while he finished his degree and he liked it. So I'm very psyched. I had my first day of training today, and another day of training later this week. :)

So all the hard work of looking for a job DID pay off. The process was really hard...putting in applications and resumes at God knows how many places and almost never getting any calls back. I'm one of those people who wants to see results from the things I do...so getting almost no responses to my applications and resumes was really hard for me. Through the whole almost six-week-long process I got three interviews - a flat out "no" from one, a "I'll get back to you" that never did get back to me (which means "no"), and then, thank goodness, a job out of the third.

The thing is that I know there are many, many other people out there whose job hunts are much longer and yielding even less calls back. I'm thankful that my search was easier than theirs.

Y'know, when I was living in California, there was this strange...almost stigma about jobs. My parents always told me that no honest work is below anyone (honest work = legal work), but when I was in school (from kindergarten all the way up through high school) people I knew, even my friends, would talk badly about other people because of the jobs their parents had. I had a friend whose mom was a health educator for the state of California and made a lot of money, and I remember her talking badly about another girl, whose mom was the head person at the bakery at the local Albertson's grocery store.

So for a long time I kind of had this...complex about jobs, a complex born from growing up in that social atmosphere.

When my dad lost his job when I was in 6th grade and couldn't find another job in his industry, he started looking for any job he could get just to put food on the table - and the job he ended up getting was driving a school bus. And he didn't drive just any school bus. He drove the short bus. He drove deaf kids to and from their special school. My dad was making less money than he'd made at any job since he was 18, but he still did it so me and my mom could eat and have a roof over our heads.

And at the time, I was ashamed that my dad was a school bus driver. I didn't tell anyone. He parked the short bus in front of our house at night and then drove it to work in the morning, but I lived in a different neighborhood from my friends at school, so nobody saw it. But I didn't let anyone come over to my house during that time. I kept my dad's school bus job a secret, and I didn't tell anyone about his work until he got a job with AT&T when I was in high school.

I've worked other jobs in the past. My first job, when I was 16, was holding an arrow on the street corner on the weekends, advertising a new housing development. That wasn't so bad, socially, since a lot of other people I went to school with did that too, but I still got teased about "working the corner."

After I graduated high school, I typed medical documents for a summer (which I absolutely hated). I was an official music theory tutor for my college when I was working on my Associate's degree. After I transferred to a 4-year college in California, I worked at Disneyland (that was always one of my life's goals), which I am very proud of. I've also worked in journalism as a copy editor and reporter. And now I work at Wendy's.

A year or two ago I might have balked at the idea of working in a restaurant. But now I've finally realized that what my parents told me all those years was right: No honest work is below anyone. And that means that I've realized that it's absolutely ridiculous to talk badly about people based on where they or their parents work.

I'm happy to work at Wendy's. My co-workers and my boss are nice people. I'll get to work with the public, which is something I really like to do (I actually hate jobs where I sit in front of a computer all day). The safety standards at work are very thorough, which means I have a very low likelihood of getting hurt at work (and if I do get hurt somehow, there are plans in place to help cover my medical care while I get better). And the work schedule and pay rate fit my needs.

I'm very happy to work at Wendy's, and I'm excited for my future there. :D

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...and then it just evaporated. I'll sit here for a second and see if it comes back.

Ah, I remember.

I wanted to note that I feel I've found a lot of emotional stability since I started studying The Second Book of the Tao (translated/adapted by Stephen Mitchell, ISBN 978-0-14-311670-7). I'm not linking to a merchant here because I'm not trying to sell anything. :p Pick it up at your local independent bookstore in the Eastern Religion: Taoism section.

I've done a lot of study of Taoism. But it's in the Second Book that it's really clicking, really making sense. Granted, I am in, undoubtably, the best place I've ever been in my life. Not just St. George, Utah, but at DSC, with Brandon, my friends, music and theatre and writing...

Well, as the commentary on poem 26 in the Second Book says:

One of the wonders of what people refer to as spiritual practice (it can also be called "sanity") is that life gets progressively easier. The bumps and jerks, the fumbles and false starts of the apprentice years smooth out, until clarity becomes second nature.

Clarity hasn't become second nature yet, and not all the bumps, jerks, fumbles, and false starts have smoothed yet either. But I am closer than I've ever been to clarity, and there are less bumps and jerks and fumbles and false starts than there once were. And the ones that happen now are of different sorts than the ones that happened in the past.

I know that I would achieve clarity much faster and more thoroughly if I had a master to teach me, but I highly doubt there's a Taoist master in Southern Utah. Either way, I'm getting there, even though it's slower. Therapy helps. It helps a lot. Kathleen is very spiritual, but not in a deistic way.

I realize now that needing people isn't a weakness. But I need to be careful of the people I go to when I'm looking to get my needs met. Some people are caustic. Toxic, even. Creating close relationships with people like that isn't wise. Discretion must be used. Discretion is essential.

I'm still absorbing the idea of nondualism. I still make distinctions between self and other, especially with regard to other people and groups of people. Stereotyping and generalization are things that I can never be rid of - they're tools used by the human mind to avoid information overload. I think that my journey toward nondualism, toward the next step of recognizing that distinctions are not real or significant, will happen later on in time. But I don't know - it could happen tomorrow, for all I know! The sheer beauty of not-knowing is just beginning to dawn on me.

I haven't gotten to the point where I can say, "I love my life." But I am beginning to glimpse how such a sentiment could be possible. And that is very significant.

I think I can say that I am...maybe not excited, but...looking forward, to the future, with cautious optimism, and maybe a touch of detached amusement.

That is also very significant. Very, very significant.

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So it's the first day of the spring semester tomorrow. I'm excited :D I have classes I like with people I like and altogether it should be really good.

Spent a couple days last week in Vegas (separately). First on Wednesday me and Brandon went to see Penn and Teller at the Rio. Then yesterday me and Brandon and Stefani and Richard went to Vegas for Stefani to get a new tattoo (covering up an old one she doesn't like anymore) and another piercing. Then we went shopping. Much, much, much fun.

I need to take a shower and get to bed...eeee, excited :D

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Almost done with Christmas music performances, at least - finals are next week!

Today we had two Vocal Jazz Project performances. One was a luncheon in the Gardner Ballroom at DSC, and one was an evening performance at a country club.

When we got to the country club, they didn't have a piano or keyboard for us. Somebody made a phone call and a girl showed up with a keyboard...like a child's keyboard. It was one of those like 66-key models and every time you pressed a white key it lit up with a pink light.

Our pianist, Justin, is an astoundingly talented musician. His performances can be awe-inspiring. So when he was given a keyboard that wasn't long enough, without a sustain pedal, with keys that *lit up pink!!* when he played them...looking back now, several hours later, it was very funny. I'm just glad I wasn't the pianist tonight. I might have cried!

But that's why I sing. I have my instrument with me wherever I go. :)

By the way, the performance went swimmingly and the audience loved us.

According to Dr. Briggs and other people on vocal jazz, my gospel solo is getting better and better. Today, after the country club performance, Al actually told me it was better without the microphone in a room that size (I really belt it out when I don't have to worry about blowing out expensive speakers).

Thursday, I sang my gospel solo in rehearsal. When I was done, Nolan said "Somebody get some chips!" Dr. Briggs was like "...what?" and Nolan continued: "'Cause Tracie's soul is saucy!"

That made me feel good :D

Hopefully I should have some video of Vocal Jazz and Chamber Singers up here soon! The winter choral concert is at DSC tomorrow at 7:30 pm (wait, it's past midnight now, so the concert is actually today...well, Friday, December 11). And then at 9:00 am on Saturday the choir bus leaves for Temple Square in Salt Lake City :D

I've got some friends I'm meeting up with in SLC between performances on Saturday. They're going to watch us sing too! I'm way excited. Unfortunately we can't take photos or recordings of the performances due to copyright regulations...hopefully I'll get some pictures when we're not actually performing. It is going to be so, so cold up there...I think I'll wear leggings under my skirt.

Today was the last day of class for History and Structure of the English Language. (yes, I am an English major, remember?) We broke up into study groups and got our work done quickly. Then we just stayed there in our groups and talked about life and finals and what we think of various authors and poets...when Professor Jantzen realized we weren't working anymore, he reminded us we had permission to leave class early - but we didn't. We're 4-year English majors - we like to just sit and talk about life, school, and literature :)

My dad has to go to California the first week of January to do some consultant work for a friend of his who owns a company. Dad asked me if I want to come along. It'd be nice to see all my friends I went to high school with - well, at least those who are still in the area - but I am so tired right now that I don't know what I'll want to do by January.

I do keep up with a lot of my old friends on facebook. My first boyfriend David, from back in 9th grade, is in medical school at UCLA now - guess I should have kept him, eh? ;) My best friend through high school, Mandie, is an architect at a firm in Rancho Cucamonga. She graduated from Cal Poly Pomona a couple years ago. Heather is in law school. Vinnie works on the cast of the TV show NUMB3RS in Burbank (he got a degree in film at Cal State Fullerton). And after Kristina got a degree in biochemistry at Notre Dame, she went back to California and became a model.

It's kind of strange, looking back at what my friends and I were like in high school and where we are now. I mean, not everyone I graduated with has a great life - there's quite a few single mothers, various people who never went to college, a lot who dropped out of the community college I got my Associate's Degree from.

And yeah...I graduated high school in 2003 and I'm still an undergrad now. But I did change my major halfway through my junior year, after I transferred to Cal State Long Beach. Then I moved out of state. That set me back a lot.

I've been thinking about it all lately...my journey through high school in California, getting my AA three years later, transferring to Cal State, changing my major, dropping out, moving to Nevada, getting accepted to University of Nevada at Las Vegas...and somehow ending up at Dixie State College in St. George, Utah, a place I never thought I'd live, a place I didn't even know existed.

The whole journey has been so chaotic.

But you know what?

I'd never take any of it back.

Dixie State College - the school itself, the English and music programs, the professors and peers I've met, everything - has changed my life irreversibly. For the better. I'm not just learning how to be a professional/technical writer, not just learning how to perform and sing more effectively...I've learned and am continuing to learn life lessons that will serve me well for the rest of my life - lessons that are serving me even now.

I could have stayed at Cal State Long Beach. I could have gone to University of Nevada at Las Vegas. But all I would have gotten there was a degree. I mean, getting a bachelor's degree - that's why I'm in college, of course.

But at DSC I've learned so much more than the material taught in my classes. I'm going to leave DSC with a Bachelor of Science in hand - but that won't be all. I'll carry what I've learned about life, carry the kindness of my professors, carry the shared experiences with my peers in my heart for the rest of my life.

My father has always told me: "An education is something no one can ever take away from you."

I know that when he's said that he's just been talking about achieving academic degrees.

But now I see a depth to his words that even he is probably still unaware of.

I've grown so much at DSC. And I'm not done yet.

Right now? I'm tired. I've been performing every day, doing homework, going to all my classes, etc...and when I finish this I am going to fall into bed and sleep.

But despite my exhaustion, I am so incredibly excited. Not just for tomorrow and the day after - but for my next two semesters at Dixie as well. I've learned so much. I'm going to learn even more before I'm through.

- Tracie

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