What have I been doing?!

My 25th birthday is coming up this Tuesday, as most people might know from of my constant reminders and messages and emails and texts, and now, this post. A whole quarter-century has passed and what the flip have I done?

Ugh, twenty-five, that is an actual grown-up age. When I was a kid I thought by 25 I would be working as a glamorous pharmacist, married to either Freddie Prinze Jr. or Prince William or Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and buying stuff with my own money, like land and patio furniture and a laserdisc player and the Spice Girls album and corduroy overalls. I also dreamt of purchasing an old power plant and living in it because I had so much money I needed to be humbled... JTT and I would sew our own clothes and I would say stuff like, "did you bring home coal from the coal forest to heat our stove for dinner?" Whatever.

Our neighbor's tortoise used to get lost in our front yard... tortoises live longer than people. I don't know exactly which species of tortoises, but there are definitely certain kinds out there that can outlive humans--up to probably 150 years or something. Our neighbor's tortoise was probably not one of these super tortoises, and if it were--it was too adventurous, so it's most likely dead now--or lost, or soup, who knows. I think many people, particularly Josh, Kyle, and Radim, have heard this complaint. It makes me sad that I cannot live as long as tortoises. Tortoises are not worthy of such long lives! Death is--oh my god, Sri (the cat) is trying to dig a cheese puff out of my loafer, so cute!--death is going to happen one day and it makes me sad that I have already spent 25 years of my life. If I am lucky, I will live up to 95... or up to whenever I completely lose control of my bowel movements, which will probably be around 90 or 95. However, there are crap loads of things that can kill me before old-age.

AND to make matters worst, I do not have an afterlife or a religion to calm my nerves (disclaimer: this is not an invitation to convert me, people). It is straight into the ground after all this! Crap! I refuse to be compost! Something about becoming 25 is really making me think about my own mortality. Some people will argue that I am being ridiculous and that 25 is not old... well, I am not saying that 25 is old, jerks. I am saying that it is the beginning of adulthood (none of this 18 year-old business, no one is an adult at 18 or 21! That's nuts!) and adulthood leads into geriatricism, which leads to death. Major companies now agree that I have gathered enough sapience and real-world experience to rent a car... a whole flippin' car... a machine as big as a rhinoceros. People trust me with rhinoceroses!

 Well, on that note, I look forward to my birthday party Tuesday. And if I have not said it enough... there is going to be

a pinata to distract me from the fact that I am getting old and will die in 70 years if I am lucky enough to avoid assassination, disease, freak accidents, and dangerous animals/insects.

I don't want to end up working at Duane Reade and admitting to my mother that she was right about how I should have gone into pharmaceuticals , or married a doctor with a nice Mercedes, or business man with a fuckin' private jet like Bill Gates

I am applying to grad schools this winter, as I have written about and alluded to a billion times.
Recently, I lost the taxidermy workshop I was organizing, I was rejected from the Seattle art gallery because the hipsters think my works are priced too high (I say, not high enough!), I stopped going to ballet, my nose is peeling all the time, and I am slightly behind in my research paper... Well, at least I have not been officially rejected from the smaller publishers... my agent tells me it should take awhile before we hear back from the smaller guys... And, I have my health, which is great--except I have developed a fear of eating hard-candy alone (I could choke and die with no one around to try to save me or listen to my last words, "arg, argh, always check the stove before you leave the house, arg, arg!").

Things feel like garbage even though I know these things are not THAT bad--and in fact, compared to other people's situations, my life is baller.
Very much a part of my quarter-life crisis, (1) I am finally realizing that one day I am going to die... and while there was a time in which death felt eons away, I have already gone through a quarter of my life--and that is generously assuming that I am going to live up to 96, which we know is not going to happen because of my diet of corn syrup and wine--it's probably going to be diabetes or liver failure around 65, right before retirement (2) I don't want to be mediocre, but I am realizing that a lot of people are mediocre. I am not going to be a Beyonce or an Ellen or an Oprah or a Boyle.
After all of my reality checks, I just want to go to graduate school, get my Ph.D. in sociology, work as a researcher/professor at a second tier university, publish some of my fiction, and skin road kill on my spare time.
This is where I am today:

I don't want to end up managing a flippin' Duane Reade.

I thought I was going to tell a cute story and specify all the things I hate about Duane Reade, but I spent too much effort on the picture above, so I'm just going to go make more popcorn and end this post.
The main point is, I want to get into grad school and if I do not get into a school this year I am going to barf.