There is a running joke in my life that I am a stripper. It started years ago when I became a librarian. People used to joke that if that career didn’t work out, then I could always become a stripper. People love stripper librarians. The joke resurfaced years later when my 90 year old Jewish neighbor asked me if I was a stripper when she saw me come home from my morning job and after seeing me leave the night before for my night job. My mother always said that she would support any career choice that I made as long as I didn’t become a crack whore, and I have to say, now that I am trying to find the money to pay for school, stripping doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Of course, I am a 25 year old nerdy Jewish girl with no rhythm. Now, there might be a market for that in Scotland, but I highly doubt it. I also know that there is no way that I can find my inner dance goddess between now and then. In the meantime, it looks like I will be hinting down student loans. At this point, I have settled into the idea of a loan. A loan will be paid back. I found out the other day that I got accepted into Cal State Fullerton’s Ed.D program. If I can delay that for a year, then I can get back into teaching and work towards being able to pay the loan off. Of course, I may need another loan to finance that career choice, but at this point, what is a little more debt?

There is another reason I could never become a stripper (not that I would ever seriously would). I fell in love and I know he would not approve of that career choice. While he has no idea I am in love with him, and I have no idea what will happen in the next few months, I know that there is no way I would do something to compromise what I have with him. Being in love terrifies me. I have no idea how he feels about me. I know that he cares about me, and that he likes me, but I don’t know if he is on the love boat, and frankly, I am too scared to ask. We are a clusterfuck of bad ideas and yet, he is the positive magnet to my negative one. I would never ask him to move, he would never ask me to stay, but I can’t help but wonder if he will change his mind about not doing a distance relationship. He changed his mind about giving me a second chance, so really anything is possible, but I do not want to get my hopes up.

In the meantime, I am going to try to stop putting off my visa application and the other scholarship applications, and I am going to pretend that I am not running out of time to be around the people I care about.