a hundred visions and revisions

I am a grump right now, and I feel like whining.

Okay, first of all, all of my appliances seem to have decided to die at once. My CD player refuses to play my CDs, the microwave only works if I stand there and hold the door closed the whole time, and my TV has started its loud buzzing thing again. I can understand with the TV and CD player - they're both fairly old, as electronic-type things go, but the microwave's only two years old. So frustrating! I know that compared to how the vast majority of the world lives, these things are all luxuries - but as a grad student who doesn't particularly want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, my microwave at least sure seems like a necessity.

Also, I've lost my student ID card. It was in my coat pocket and I think it either fell out during the walk to campus, or somewhere in the library. I've checked everywhere, and it hasn't turned up. My ID card is what I use to be able to ride the bus without paying, so for the past few days I've had to spend 75 cents each way on that. Plus I can't check out any books right now and um, hello? Library student! I haven't gotten a chance this week to go and get a new one made, so I guess I'll have to do that first thing Monday.

Also also, Carrie had asked me to take on several pretty involved high school instruction sessions, which I gladly agreed to do - until I realized that all four are during the week after Thanksgiving, when I've also got a couple of my end-of-semester projects due. Plus my regular class and work schedule. So it looks like that'll be a fun week!

Finally (and this is going to sound ridiculous, I know): I've been feeling kind of old lately. I know, it's crazy for a 26-year-old to be whining about feeling old, but...where have my 20s been going? I just don't feel grown-up enough for so many years to have passed by already. I don't know - I guess it's just that, if you'd asked my 16-year-old self (or my 22-year-old self, for that matter) what 26-year-old me would be like, I think I would have pictured myself as a lot more mature and accomplished and all that. What exactly have I done so far, in 26 years? Have I really done anything worthwhile? Are the next ten years of my life just going to be more of the same old, same old? I'm deathly afraid of just stagnating, settling in, not striving for anything more than what I've got now. I think I have tendencies that way. I like to be comfortable, and I fear big changes so much - but keeping things the same just ends up making me feel miserable, like I'm wasting my life. I guess I thought that adulthood was going to be different somehow, that it would phenomenally change me, but instead I just feel like an old, very slightly wiser version of 16-year-old me.