Or if not totally dry, it’s mostly just mud at the bottom.

Feeling sleepy and tired and logey today, so the words, they do not come easy. I honestly want to go back to bed. I have hit one of my sleepy patches and I feel very bleah.

But I will keep on doing my thousand words a day for as long as I can. It’s not impossible that I won’t have the time or energy to spare once classes start, and this long, long experiment in teaching myself to write by writing will come to an end, or at least be on pause for a while.

But I don’t want that to happen. No matter how much other work I have to do, I will still need to express myself directly like I do on this blog. Here, I can just spill out whatever is on my mind at the time, without filtering it or prioritizing it or organizing or any of that shit. And that’s invaluable for someone like me who always has a head overflowing with words that want to get out.

Writing this blog is the only way I know to relieve the pressure.

I honestly don’t know what this next phase of my life will be like. But I know it will make me better. Not just a better writer, but a more whole, confident, centered person who doesn’t feel so totally unprepared for the real world any more.

I am confident in that outcome because I know how much good Kwantlen did for me. I already find it hard to relate to the person I was before I went back to school. Hell, I have trouble relating to the person I was last semester. It really seems like that was someone else. A sadder, more broken, more incomplete version of me, that I love and want to care for, but at the same time, I am glad I am no longer him.

We will get through this together, old friend. I’m going to take us out of the darkness at long last. All those years of letting the days go by because it was all we could do to just make it through the day will come to an end, and we will gain the skills we have always wanted and, the biggest prize of all, employment. And with it, self-sufficiency.

I don’t think there is anything in the world that could do more for my self-esteem and general mental health than finally being able to earn a living.

And it will be amazing to go to prospective employers with a VFS diploma to use as proof that I can do what I say I can do. One of the worst things about going to job interviews back when I was still capable of doing it was the fact that I had absolutely nothing to offer employers in the way of proof that I was even capable of full time employment. No job experience, no diplomas, no certificates, nothing. Plus I had a lot of lost time to have to explain. It put me at a massive disadvantage before I even walked in the door, and when you suffer from social anxiety like I do, that’s enough to make it impossible to keep doing it for long enough for some employer to take pity on you and hire you.

My sister Anne told me that finding a job was about getting told no a million times before someone says yes. I was not cut out of that. I’m still not, not really, although these days I would be far more capable of turning on the personality and impressing the hell out of them that way.

I have great powers of personality when I turn on the charm. I am hoping to use that in the entertainment industry, which runs on personality in some ways. I still don’t have the actual social skills slash experience to use my charm as effectively as I would like, but there’s no way of getting over that except to go out there and get hurt, so that is what I will have to do.

Take your lumps and learn. That’s something jocks understand that nerds don’t.

And it will help greatly that I will have a role, namely that of student (or eventually, graduate). Roles help me immensely. That’s why my social anxiety was never an issue when I worked as a cashier/clerk for my uncle Sonny at his shop. I had a clearly defined role, so every social interaction with the customers was clear. I was the clerk, they were the customer, they wanted me to ring up their stuff or rent them things or whatever, and I wanted to do it for them. I didn’t have to navigate the murky and treacherous waters of personal, one on one interaction, where awkwardness rules and I never know who I am and my inner demons can easily persuade me that this person hates me and wishes I would just go away.

And that was all I needed, really. The role. I was quite good at that job, if I say so myself. And I do. I was personable, friendly, and efficient. And I liked the work. Like I have said before, to me, it comes down to people wanting me to do things I can totally do, and that, to me, makes it a highly pleasant job. I don’t find it humiliating to do that sort of work, like some people seem to, nor do I seem to encounter the Customers From Hell other people talk about.

So honestly, any small business that needs someone to run the cash register for them would be lucky to have me. Too bad I can’t prove it.

So who knows. Maybe I can dazzle some employer with my charm and my not being an irresponsible kid who is going to ditch work to get stoned with friends, and get a part time job downtown.

It would do me a lot of good.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

There should be a transvestite martial arts movie called Enter the Drag Queen.

The tagline could be “Watch this Dragon get their Drag On!”

So today, I went to VFS to go over some stuff with Patrick and sign a bunch of forms. The commute took around 45 minutes total. 10 getting to the Skytrain, 25 on the Skytrain, 10 walking to VFS. That means that in order to get my ass to class by 9 am, I will have to be out the door by 8:15 minimum.

I will probably leave at 8 in order to leave a buffer zone.

My biggest worry is not the commute (because, like, whatever, this is my dream here) but the fact that I have to do it during rush hour, which means being part of the commuter rat race, which will not be easy for an edge of the herd type like myself.

More importantly, it means I might not get a seat on the Skytrain. And while 25 minutes sitting down is a breeze for me (I just read a book), 25 minutes standing up could be…. problematic.

Luckily, I know from way back in the days when I took the Skytrain a lot (like, for instance, when I lived a block away from it) that if you keep your eyes open, a seat usually opens up eventually and you can sit your big fat ass down in it ASAP.

And there’s nothing quite like the pain of swollen feet to keep you alert to seating opportunities.

The walk from Waterfront Skytrain Station to VFS was easy. For one, it turns out it’s not six blocks, it’s four. And in that direction, it’s downhill, and fairly gentle gradient, although Richmond has spoiled me so that any gradient at all feels like I am in an Escher painting.

Once there (quite early, which is quite typical of me), I was able to tell the receptionist (and the super gay guy who apparently answers the phone) I was there. There was some confusion at first when they told me that Patrick’s office was in some building on Water Street, which was news to me. The last time I had been there, Patrick’s office had been in the same building as the writing program, 198 West Hastings.

But then again, since the first time I applied, Patrick went from being Senior Admissions Assistant to Director of Admissions, so…. no doubt that is why he got the new office. And hey, it can’t have hurt my chances to have the guy who fought to get me in the first time (only to be overruled by that prick Simon, who is NO LONGER THERE) become the head of admissions, right?

The big issue, of course, is the $3600 difference between what the government will dole out in student loans for one year and tuition at VFS. That’s a lot of money to come up with. Luckily, the school has set up a payment plan, so that I don’t have to come up with it all at once.

It goes something like this :

2016-05-10 $800.00 CAD
2016-06-30 $800.00 CAD
2016-07-29 $500.00 CAD
2016-08-30 $510.00 CAD

Even luckier is the fact that I can make that first payment from my savings, no prob. Then I will have 2 months to come up with the second payment. And I have a lot of avenues to explore in that time. I could look for a personal loan. I could ask to borrow from Joe.

Heck, I could even get a job. VFS is in the heart of downtown Vancouver, and there are tons of little sandwich shops and other lunchy places just between the Skytrain and VFS. I might be able to pick up an after-school shift or two in some little business there in order to pay VFS.

Or who knows, maybe VFS has jobs I could do themselves. I would happily work off my debt. I could answer the phone, do office gruntwork (copying, filing, and mail? Sure!), get coffee for people. I have no problem with that. It’s one of the benefits of having a flexible ego.

Hey…. I’m just happy to be here.

So I am not too worried about the money. I am confident I will come up with it somehow, especially given the fairly generous payment plan.

Plus, I am not exactly sure, but I think the amount the government kicks in because I am disabled and because I am low income will be applies to that missing money, so it may turn out that the gap is not as big as I thought. Plus I will, of course, look for scholarships and bursaries, but without a heck of a lot of hope in my heart, because the truth is, there’s not a lot out there for people who are not recent high school graduates and/or who are not pursuing normal type employment.

Who knows, now that I have a year of college under my belt with pretty good grades (especially if you ignore certain courses) will open doors for me. I can only hope.

For the trip back to the Skytrain station, I took the bus. Downhill is one thing, uphill is quite another. I probably could make it on foot, though I would probably have to rest on each block. But why put myself through that when I can take literally any downtown bus and have it take me to the Skytrain sooner or later?

Maybe when the weather is nice, I will consider it.

The basic deal is that I will have a three hour class from nine to noon, lunch from noon to one, and another three hour class between one and four, five days a week. So basically I will be going from five three hours courses a week to ten, doubling my workload.

No problem. I was getting bored anyhow.

We did the tour of the writing floor again. It’s quite small. But that’s the lovely thing about writing. It doesn’t take up a lot of room and it doesn’t need expensive equipment.

All you need is imagination, verbals skills, and the ability to type.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.