I've determined that there must be something about Sunday where patience and strength of calm are at their weakest. Maybe it's like that for humans in general and that's why Sunday was the day chosen as the day of rest and prayer. I'm beginning to think that I might need to reclaim my Sunday for my own purposes as well not allowing myself to do anything but rest or pray because it's becoming quite apparent to me that working or attempting any kind of future planning is just too much for me to handle. It's quite amazing how quickly I became overwhelmed or irritated by things today. At first I thought that my frustrated Sundays had to do not getting enough sleep. However, I practically slept all day today and I was still completely irrational so I doubt that sleep has anything to do with it.
Maybe I'm just in need of a vacation. It's been almost a full year since my last one and I was such a psychological mess back then (yes, even more than I am now) that I didn't get the same sort of benefits that I normally get when I go away. There's that and the fact that I'm still getting used to the real world. The idea that school or college prepares you for the world is such a joke. Absolutely nothing about 2 hour classes, months off during the year, and the constant changing of subjects prepares you for the long monotonous days of the real world workforce. I'm not used to doing the same thing every day with few long breaks. Sure it is less stressful than school which makes the long breaks less necessary but going more than a year without more than a couple of days off at a time is difficult.
In addition, school doesn't prepare you you for the real world necessities such as managing your home and your finances. Granted I lived a very privileged existence compared to many of my peers. Growing up our top priorities were excelling in school, skating, and theater. It was important to my parents to have us be educated, well rounded individuals. Of course, through these activities I've learned a great deal of life skills. From school, I learned how to meet the expectations of various authority figures, how to easily transition from subject to subject, how to work under pressure, think critically, and how to handle some basic problem solving.
Figure skating taught me whole different set of skills such as that the world is a very subjective place. Two people can watch the same performance and score you completely differently. It also taught me that although patience and dedication can pay off, sometimes even if you try your best doesn't necessarily mean you'll succeed. Overall, I learned that no matter how many times I fell that I needed to get up and keep going. Participating in theater gave me the skills needed to work as a member of a team and the importance of everyone working together toward a common goal. Most importantly, it taught me how to get up in front of a large audience and sing or recite lines and convey an emotion. One of people's biggest fears is speaking in front of a large group and that is not something that I have an issue with.
Unfortunately, running around from school to skating to theater didn't really give me the opportunities to get learn how to manage a home or my finances. We ate out most of the time as there really wasn't enough time to cook a meal despite my mother being a pretty decent cook. Although my mother tried, I never really took to the whole cleaning thing and I didn't learn how to do my own laundry until I was in college. How sad is that?
More than that though was that I never really learned how to manage my money. I had a job from the time I was a sophomore and was working full time every summer from my junior year on but I apparently just spent the money like nothing. Growing up I learned that big purchases needed to be prioritize and may not always be something that we could afford. I remember specifically telling my mother that I didn't want her to spend my mother to spend my college fund on skating and I chose to go the public high school over the private one because $5,000 a year didn't seem practical to me. So I had a basic understanding but I never really learned how work day to day expenses. Graduating from college was a giant learning experience in making money and paying bills.
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