It's strange how quickly things change. One morning, you wake up and it's cold and rainy and you know that it's another season. Fall becomes the present and summer the past, and you witnessed the change but you can't pinpoint exactly when it happened.

That's what my life feels like right now. Everything is different.

Not too long ago, I was working half a dozen gigs, trying my damnedest to earn money from unreliable sources, and taking pride in the fact that every facet of my personality was earning money. I can be respectable and in-charge and academic; so I had a consulting job. I can be unorthodox and willing to show my body; so I had a job as a model-teacher. I can be over(t)ly sexual and sensual; so I became a dominatrix. I can be warm and maternal; so I taught poetry to at-risk youths. I can be creative and spontaneous; so I was a freelance writer for the campus women's center.

I had wrongly believed that I wanted to pimp out my talents and facets in order to earn money. "It's what celebrities do," I said to myself. "They get paid for being themselves."

But in selling these facets of my personality, I felt like a whore, selling my self. I had become adept at comodifying Me, and while I was reaping the rewards, I felt like I was only a product. I wasn't a person anymore.

So here I am, barely working. I'm only holding on to my consulting job, and barely at that. I'm looking for a boring full-time 9 to 5 which will give me time for stasis. I fully anticipate running on all cylinders outside of work - school, writing, and other creative endeavors will take up my time and energy - and I need a boring place to relax and just work.

I know that going back to school will be difficult for me. I haven't been in school for two years, I think. It's been so long that I don't remember. All I know is that I have a lot of work to make up, and I want to get to my peak academic condition. I've totally rearranged my priorities and I've realized that my big problem - one of the reasons that my priorities haven't been what they are now - is that I can't handle the input of authority figures. I naturally resist doing what parents and guardians and police officers and teachers and mentors tell me. I don't believe that it's possible for anyone to know better than me, and when someone says something to me, I automatically believe that it can't be valid or true. Having opinions shoved down my throat only delays the process of embracing that opinion.

I've become very vanilla in a short amount of time, and I like that. I like having so much experience under my belt and not seeming that way. I like having a past that is so colorful and different from the usual past. I take pride in having been a dominatrix and a juvenile delinquent and having done drugs and been a ho and been in fights. Those are extraordinary feats of personality.

But now I want to stretch out in the opposite direction and be more "conventional". I want long-term monetary success. I want stability. I want family. I want academic status. These are all things that mainstream American tells you you should want, and for that reason, I've been rebelling against them. But now I'm embracing them, and I'm not afraid to show it.

Labels are for wusses. History is where it's at. Call me what you want; but if you don't know who I've been, you have no idea who I am.