Sacred Bovine on Hiatus...

Life has been a little crazy lately. I've been a little overworked and a lot over committed, running around trying to keep a thousand plates spinning and getting annoyed at myself, over and over, when they keep breaking. I've been uncharacteristically (or at least I hope!) flaky lately to many people - messages and emails left unreturned, constantly running late, canceling on plans, and so forth. (Um, sorry to those of you who have been on the other end of this rampant flakiness...)

...and I'm guessing it's going to get worse. On Wednesday, I start a new job that I am incredibly excited about. (Not going to post it here, but email if you're curious). I don't really know what my hours are going to look like, but I have a feeling they are going to be long and unpredictable...especially given how much I care about the work I'm going to be doing. I'm hoping once I settle into a pattern to keep the flakiness to a mimimum of course...but for the next few weeks at least, I can't see it getting much better.

And I'm ready for it. A friend the other day reminded me that when I took my current (soon to be previous!) job, I had said I was looking forward to a slightly more low-key job (at least compared to the campaign insanity before that.) 8:30-5:30, hour for lunch, very little overtime. Time for myself - time to meet people, make friends in Boston, learn the city, add other (non-work) activities to my life. It was good to be reminded of that...sometimes it's nice to realize you've accomplished goals you've already forgot you set. It was a good year, and it was good to take the time for those things...and now I think I'm ready to get back to work (so to speak.)

Which was all a long-winded way of saying I'm putting the blog on semi-hiatus for awhile. I'm not going to stop blogging entirely, but given my dearth of posts during these last few busy weeks and the impending craziness, I doubt I'm going to be as regular a poster as before. We'll see, of course -- there's nothing like madness to get the fingers typing -- but for all, like, five of you who read this regularly, don't be surprised to see much bigger gaps between postings.

Here goes!

Heart Rippage

I found out tonight that my sister got her financial package from her top choice school. Bastards seem to think she and/or my parents can somehow afford $20,000+ dollars per year...and all I can think is, are they out of their minds? Did they *see* my parents' financial statements? Oh, they are nowhere near destitute, but come on now... and do they really think a kid going to a film program can possibly afford to graduate with almost ninety grand in debt?

Bastards.

As you can tell, I'm a little upset. I think this college financial game they are playing these days -- the one where private colleges seem to want to make themselves affordable only to rich kids -- plain sucks. My sister had her heart set on this school, and she got in with a (albeit small) academic scholarship. She deserves the chance to go and get that education she's been dreaming of.

Okay, I know, lots of kids deserve an educational experience they aren't going to get. Etc etc ad nauseum. But still.

I'm proud of the fact that I put myself through college, and I think my sister will be similarly proud, in the end. Sure, I got jealous when I saw friends or dormmates jet off to China or Guatemala or somewhere similarly exotic for Winter Term, and I resented, just a little, people who could afford to take unpaid internships. I still get angry when I see do-gooder organizing jobs offering a starting pay of $19,000, because the only people who can afford to take a job for that little is someone who doesn't have student loan payments. And lord knows I would love to be a little less in debt.

All told, however, I don't regret my college debt -- and, in fact, I think that independence has been good for me.

But my 30 or so grand in debt is not 90 grand. (Oh, and I feel guilty about that too...I got to go to my dream school, so it seems only fair that she should get to go to hers.) If I have a hard time making ends meet sometimes on my half-way decent PR salary and limited student loans, I have no idea how a film student (or graduate) could possibly strap together the cash to make that high of a monthly loan payment. Basically, she's been screwed.

So I've jumped into hyper-big-sister mode...strategizing ways of negotiating with the Financial Aid department, looking up programs she could apply to late, bugging her to send me her scholarship essays, wondering if I could somehow help spot her the money, trying to dream up a way she could take a year off, have a really fabulous experience somewhere, and somehow find a better, cheaper school in the meantime...and on and on.

I'm a classic oldest child, a distinction I come to better understand more and more each day. Even better, I am that particular variety of older sister that is just enough older than her siblings as to feel personally responsible for their well-being. I'm almost seven years older than my sister and another couple on top of that older than my brother. I didn't grow up playing the same games with them; I grew up babysitting them. We were never childhood playmates (a fact I regret, sometimes; there's a special bond there we'll never have). But they are mine in a way that I think only an older sister can really know. It was my job (self-appointed, perhaps, but my job none the less) to protect them from everything -- from the world, from other kids, even, at times, from getting in too much trouble with Mom & Dad. (There's the distinction from mother & older sister...the older sister runs interference with the parents as much as she does the rest of the world.)

I'm her big sister, and all I want is to make it better...and I'm realizing that the only way I know to make things better is through sheer force of will and a pretty good understanding of how to work the system.

But for all this flailing, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it better this time. I don't know how to protect her from this one. And it just rips my heart out.