Present Activities

It's been three months since I've graduated from uni and I don't know what to say. This is the first time in my life that I've been out of the school system. I didn't apply for graduate school, so graduate school is not in my foreseeable future. It hit me that I'm not a kid anymore, I'm just some adult who doesn't have a paying job and in all respects is just a bum. Attending university my occupation was a student, so even though I didn't have a part time job I couldn't be blamed for not making some money. But right now I'm just some 22 year old who is living off of his parents. Life isn't constant and I don't know if I'm ready to face the real world.

Things are changing. A housemate and friend of mine for almost 4 years recently moved out, and in the next three months my housemate of 5 years will be moving to Washington D.C., and another guy I've lived with for 2 years will move back home when school ends. I'll be left with some other people subletting for the summer. My girlfriend is hearing back from graduate schools. She got into one as of this writing. Theoretically I could be left in Davis by myself and it feels damn scary.

Life has been pretty stable for me. I've lived with the same people throughout college, and there were turbulent times along the way but nothing has truly rocked the boat until now. Of course I couldn't expect things to never change. We need to branch out and move on with our lives. Could I have prepared myself for this? I dunno.

At the moment I'm working for the Nanocenter in the engineering department of UC Davis. Hopefully I can start getting pay as an assistant, even though I'm not a UCD student anymore. I spend about 20 hours a week there electroplating and helping around the cleanroom and lab. It's a pretty chill job. Every day I go in I learn a little bit more about machines or a bit of chemistry, so that keeps me excited to get up and go to work.

One of my side projects has been to create an e-commerce website to sell about half a small building's worth of imports from China. I've been using Zen Cart and learning as I go; picking up bits of PHP, Flash/Actionscript, and practicing the art of photography. This fits into a bigger plan to build simple websites for small businesses or organizations. This isn't my life calling that's for sure, it's just a side job for a little extra spending money and to be my own boss in some form. If I have to work under somebody else as my main source of income I at least want to be the owner and my own boss doing something.

These things keep me busy and keeps my mind from wandering off thinking about the future. Work, website, workout, eat and sleep. Sprinkle in some time to hang out with the people around me and the time I use to waste online and you have my life in a nutshell.

As for the future, all I know is that come the end of summer if I don't have a job somewhere or haven't gone to China to teach English I'm packing up my bags and going back to Hanford. Davis is great, but what makes it worth staying here are the people around me. And if they're gone well then it's a sure signal it's time for me to move on, too.