dear destiny

I'm paralyzed. I'm furious.

I'm spending the summer working for $8.72 an hour at a department store.
I'm missing out.
I'm wasting my potential.
It kills me that my classmates are living in New York City with glamorous internships - securing their futures. All I'm securing is the constant headache that working with the public never fails to provide.

Did I mention that I'm already looking into boxes? That's right, boxes. When I graduate in 2009 with a sparkling $175,000 journalism degree from one of the best communications schools in the country there will be a gaping hole in my resume. "The internshipless summer of 2007", "the life-experience drought of 2007" . When I'm jobless and homeless on the street I want to make sure I at least have a spacious, sturdy box. When my classmates walk by with their ironed suits and shiny briefcases I can at least be seen in a decent box.

I wimped out.
I chickened out.
I procrastinated.
The bile rises in my throat when I think about it.

I could have gotten a great internship. I know it. Granted, I don't have any connections - my mom isn't the CEO of NBC, my hairdresser's mom doesn't work for Vanity Fair. But those are minor details. I'm a columnist for my daily college newspaper and I have a 3.9 GPA. I'd just have to market myself like a prostitute. I can do that.

I know how things work: employers aren't wringing their hands with sadness at the thought that they missed out on me. Deadlines have come and gone, they've filled their openings with suitable minions. BUT I COULD HAVE BEEN ONE OF THOSE MINIONS!!!

Now I'm wringing my hands in sadness and kicking myself for thinking an internship would just magically come along.

My mom would say that this all worked out. You know, with one of those motherly i-have-my-own-private-crystal-ball-ha ha-you-can't-see-it looks she tells me that at least now I'm motivated. I guess homelessness is the price I'll pay for motivation.

In the mean time I feel like I'm floating. I know where I want to be but I just can't get there. Spending summers at home as a college student is one of the most painful things I've ever done. It's a massive flying-leap backwards from everything I loved about living at school. I feel pathetic - detached from my destiny. I've been demoted.

But I'm determined to make the best of it. And I have a message for my destiny if it hasn't already given up one me: "I'm coming, I'm just taking the long way."