Use Somebody

We've got four and a half weeks left of school, and I'm so freaking excited. First of all, I'll be done with these classes, some of which have been causing a large and unnecessary amount of stress. I'm still a perfectionist, and I hate the thought of losing points, and some of the classes are designed to have really low averages...

But I'm also excited for school to finish so that I can actually start working and have money. This may sound pathetic, but the last legit job that I remember working was during my junior year of high school. I worked at a grocery store for about 8 months. After that, I had an internship through my senior year, but it was 15 hours a week and only paid minimum wage, which was $5.15 an hour. Freshman year, no job. Mission, home, sophomore, junior year--no job, either. So yeah, needless to say, I'm miraculously poor.

The internship pays a lot, though. And I'll have enough to pay back all of my student loans, pay for my last few semesters of school, and have enough to get by for a while after graduation, if needed. I just won't be paying back my student loans yet. I know we aren't supposed to go into debt or whatever, but they're subsidized loans, so I'm not paying interest or having it accrue. In fact, with inflation lowering my debt-service ratio and the possibility of living in an area with a high cost of living and, as a result, higher salary, it's actually more expensive for me to pay off the loans sooner than six months after graduation--the time when the payments start kicking in.

What else?

I was reading another kid's blog, and he was talking about how when something bad happens, he feels like God is punishing him. I am the exact same way, and I guess it is kind of retarded. I feel like it, first of all, removes my sense of control over a situation. If it's God punishing me, than I have to accept the punishment and live with it, you know? But that's not how it's supposed to work, I think.

When something bad happens, it lies within our power to either fix it or make the situation better... whether or not we want to admit it. I don't know why I've been so stupid.

Anyway, I slipped up. Pisses me off because I'd like to be able to just do everything right the first time around. So I pretty much wander around, waiting for my punishment. Once the "punishment" arrives, I just take it, live with it, don't do anything to fix it.

I don't know if God really is vindictive, but it doesn't mesh with the idea of God that we've been taught in church. Vindictive or not (and I'm really going with not, but humor me), my agency still exists. I act on the situations; although their occurrence may be outside my power, I decide what to make of them, and that power has and always will exist in me.

Having said that, I don't think God is looking to "ding" me at every mistake I make. I may, through my agency, forgo potential blessings, but I don't think He's looking for ways to punish me. Maybe that's misguided, but I don't know how else to think of it.