The Rules

The Rules:

Finish high school with good grades. Go to a good college. Get a (useful) degree. Find a good job. Lose your virginity to someone special. Chin up, chest out, smile pretty, work hard, don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs—and for God's sake, have a plan.

Obstinance has no place in a life plan, I've found, at least not in an easy life plan. Mine was linear at one point. I had what I needed to ride the middle class train to moderate success and with any luck the requisite midlife crisis (mine would have been a Porsche and a cabana boy). Instead, the plan now looks like a bunch of post-its tacked up onto a bulletin board by a blind, drunken psychopath.

And I can trace it all back to being a stubborn, elitist bitch.

The Plan vs. The Rules:

*Finished high school with good grades

*Went to a good college... for a year—promptly flunked out

*Degree: elusive, but then one has to finish a goddamn class once in awhile to get one of those

*Found a crap job that pays like crap, and sometimes I worry my brain will melt and dribble out my nose from ill-use

*Virginity lost... left blank to protect the innocent

*Chin up

*Chest out

*Smile pretty (and also disdainfully, mockingly, falsely, maniacally)

*Work hard, if working hard at a a job an untrained monkey could do is considered working hard. I really don't know, you'd have to ask the monkey

*(don't) Smoke

*(don't) Drink

*No drugs at least. Except amounts of coffee that would warrant a personal visit from the surgeon general if he knew

*Plan—sort of

The Plan As I Know It:

Don't give up, misery only lasts so long. Get a job I can stand while trying to find the motivation to get a degree and the tolerance to take classes with my peers (a generous term). Find a place to live not my parents' house—not that I don't love them, but if we had a basement I'd be some disgusting, artist cliché.

My other plan, the plan that isn't really practical, feasible, or anything else that resembles doable, is this: Live in a penthouse with a terrace and a bathtub I can practically swim in. Chain smoke on my balcony (terrace). Be consistently well-stocked in good wine and good food and good shoes—see nauseatingly expensive. Edit novels with a pretty red pen.

Write novels with a pretty blue pen.

Write my future out in pencil.

Live my life.