Suddenly, it's summer...

I guess it shows how much I do want to hide my head in the sand, because I don't even want to sit here and write this post, let alone think about it for any length of time away from my keyboard.

To update you all, school has once again come to a close for me, as it has most every Canadian university student. We are indeed on summer vacation, and with the amazing weather recently, it certainly feels like the vacation is in full swing.

For me, summer has always meant different things in different years. During high school, it was the few weeks that felt like years that we could sit around, enjoy the weather and basically do nothing. I would spend time working for my uncle, or around with my family, or just hang around with friends. It was utterly simple; there were no real expectations of you since there were no tuition, rent or food bills to pay in the coming months.

After first year university, summer meant coming home and loving almost every minute of it. I was genuinely excited to return home, to wash myself of Toronto and university and reflect on what had happened, how things had been different than I expected they would, and what the future had in store. After all, I had three more years of school, plus I was just about to get my very first apartment with my friend.

Once second year was finished, I wanted to be anywhere but Toronto. My living situation had become completely unmanageable and I could not fathom living under that roof a second longer than necessary. I think I moved back home the moment my last class was finished, desperate to escape my situation and eager to forget my year. After my trip to France, I came home to unemployment and a tumultuous summer with my family.

Now that third year is over, I again have a very different outlook on things. For the first time, I feel a great sense of ease living in my city of Toronto. Its taken time, but I've slipped into a comfortable acceptance of the city that I didn't even realize was happening. Just last week, a friend (who also lives in a rural area back home near Vancouver) and I were talking about how after living another year in Toronto we had both become at complete ease with the city. We had, dare I say, become Torontonians (minus, of course, actually having any position in the ranks of Toronto culture and society).

Maybe it's a reflection on how I feel as a person. I've really become comfortable with myself, as each year passes, and don't feel the struggle and strain from my inner battles with understanding. Not that I never 'knew who I was', but I have dusted off the finer points of character and embraced them. And not that I have become completely satisfied with the state of my being (as I still have a bunch of questions that go unanswered), but I continue to discover that I am happier now than I have ever been.

But I have some serious decisions to make, and they must be made soon.

In the next few days I have to...hell, I don't even know what I have to do. Essentially I have to nail down what I'm going to do for the next few months. But in all honesty, I'd rather just go hide in a corner than have to deal with all of this...thinking.

My problem is, I'm happy. (Holy shit, did I just say happy?)

Things in life right at this moment are actually OK. I don't have drama in Toronto with roommates, as we all get along fine. I don't have drama at home with my parents (read: mother), since it seems that everyone has genuinely gotten over whatever our issues were. And as for me, well, I don't have any major internal conflicts that are preoccupying and persistently interrupting my life.

Like I said before, by no means is my life perfect, with everything in its place and every question answered. But on the grand scale, things are better than ever.

But with all this relative un-drama and non-bullshit, it makes my decisions about what to do for my summer even harder. I don't need to run away from Toronto, nor do I need to avoid my home and family. I don't need to move out of my apartment.

But the one thing I do need is a job, and it's something that I'm having a lot of trouble with.

I don't even know where I want to spend the summer, let alone what kind of job I really want to do. It's pretty late in the game to be looking for summer student employment, to be quite honest, but I think that shows just how lost and undecided I am; I have been avoiding answering this question for as long as I can remember.

The first part is, where do I want to spend my next four months? Do I want to remain in Toronto, or do I feel like a change of pace that would be achieved in the country?

At this point I'm leaning more towards spending my summer at home, for a change of scenery and a reduction in my cost of living. I'll be able to spend less money, both on the essentials of food and household goods, and the unessential damages to my bank account that come from living near the best shopping in Canada.

I of course have some pretty opulent plans if I do end up living back home, what you may think of as 'summer resolutions'. I plan to get up every morning, early. Join the gym, and build it into a regular part of my day. Work my shift at whatever job, and maybe work overtime to get some extra cash. Fill my down time with actually useful activities, like reading scholarly works and maybe getting involved in doing some volunteer work. The point is, I don't want to waste away my days over the summer doing nothing. I've done it, and as much fun as it can be at times, it mostly is very draining and daunting to aimlessly piss away the days.

Looking at that list, it seems quite ambitious and slightly unreasonable. I mean, will I actually get any of this stuff done? Truthfully, what scares me the most is an idle summer, so I would have to guess that yes, I'll be doing some of the things on my list.

But there also is the genuine possibility that I'll be quite lonely over the summer. Not completely alone, mind you, but without much to do. I know most of my friends from home are staying in their respective cities, and I have really grown away from most of them anyway. Of the few that I know will be in town, I can honestly say I wouldn't be calling them up to go for coffee. Time spent together with mutual friends is one thing, but turning an acquaintance into a friend is something I doubt I'll be doing at home.

To that end, however, I realize that I can travel between home and Toronto fairly easily during the summer months. I won't be cut off from the city, and realistically I can spend a bit of my spare time there. It won't be every second, but I can see myself bouncing back and forth on my days off work.

So now with a location seemingly chosen, I have to find work. Sadly, there isn't much available in our area, and I honestly don't know how one goes about finding a job. It sounds stupid, but I've really never had to do a student job hunt before. In the past I've always worked for family or at a job where I could return to my position; neither of those options are available anymore.

While there are many things that I could see myself doing for work, there are equally many that I could never possibly envision myself doing. This isn't a superiority complex, just an observation. After a quick breeze through our local paper's want ads, most of the positions advertised are for lawn maintenance, golf course maintenance, construction and landscaping...all jobs that I would be hapless in performing. While the thought of joining a gym and running on a treadmill quite appeals to me, hauling wheelbarrows of soil around all day does not.

What irks me the most is the news of other people getting halfway-decent jobs for the summer. One friend is working at a lab, labeling samples and processing them. Another is working for a manufacturing company (and being well paid for it). Some are even starting real jobs related to their field of study; I shouldn't compare this to myself because it's not what I'm looking for, but still, it's hard to hear of people getting into the working world and actually making money.

So...where, in all of this white noise known as my brain, do I find my answers? My problem is that I simply have none, and it's hard to find the motivation to solve the puzzle when I don't really have a picture of the final product to work towards.

I'm not sure how, but I have to come up with some answers soon, since summer has officially started.