The Roadie

I'll post something soon-ish about graduation and all its associated miseries and delights. I haven't done so yet because I threw my back out (mildly) on Sunday, trying to lift an amp. To be more precise, I didn't try -- I actually did lift it with one hand, up a couple stairs, thinking, perhaps, that I was actually a 250-pound man with a beer-stained t-shirt and large, hairy belly and the ability to lift 50-pound electric guitar amps.

In fact, I am not. My back recognized this when I put the amp down and complained, loudly and insistently, that I am actually a 112-pound Asian American woman with big dreams but small, weak arms and bad lifting posture.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon supine, as well as yesterday afternoon, occasionally stuffing potato chips down my gullet as I read Calvin & Hobbes cartoons and channel surfed. It wasn't bad. I could get used to being an invalid.

Anyway. That's why I haven't done anything significant the past few days since graduation. (It might also be emotional and physical exhaustion from graduation, too.) But the halcyon days of the pre-grad period are gone, replaced now by a welcome lack of stress about said graduation, but the continuing annoyance of trying to find funding and failing. After a number of conversations with people both in the know and not, it seems that this is going to be a quixotic task indeed, which means that corporate whoredom is looking more and more likely. But that's okay. Having had this small bright light of hope shine briefly into my life has forced me to be the cruise director, and a reminder that I control my own destiny, even through an ultimately failed attempt to do the directing, is a very good thing.