I -would- work in the factory where I was born, but I can't get a job there

Lately, I've been waking up at like three a.m. with ridiculous urges to eat cereal or go sit in the living room and stare at the light coming in the windows or, in the case of last night, puke. WTF? Anyway, it led to an unsettling night and so I woke up without ever really waking up.

Despite feeling like dish water, I got out of bed and checked my e-mails, which then made me feel like dish water circling the drain. First one from Roloff about internship workshops, another from the Career Center about the fast-approaching job fair, a third from the electric company (my bill is ready!) and finally one from my Online Journalism professor about our assignment. The last one requires a little explaining: a) it was an article Forbes ran calling Chicago the most stressful city in America using unscientific methodology and an arbitrary ranking system and b) that class gets under my skin. So I woke up groggy and was instantly bombarded with stress.

The Forbes article is perhaps the perfect example of how the impersonal (rising unemployement rate, sickening economy, the crumbling stock market) is getting increasingly personal. In this case, because fucking Forbes Magazine is saying your city sucks, but it got me thinking about my own life and how much has changed domestically since I started college. When I left home in 2004, my dad worked at "corporate" and made the most money he's ever made in his life, gas cost $2 a gallon, food was affordable and although the news industry was dwindling, it appeared relatively steady. In the past few months, my dad (along with 1,500 others at his company) was laid off and spent months unemployed, my family currently doesn't have health insurance and the news industry is rapidly changing and shedding hundreds of employees every year. So forgive me if I can't read yet another article about how much everything sucks right now. I can't pick up a newspaper or plug in an address and read about how the economy is tanking and my bills will be getting more expensive and the news industry is struggling. I can't do it, and -luckily- I don't have to. Cause I have my inbox.

Oh, also, I'm broke.

Maybe my body knew today wasn't worth waking up for. I'm going to go cuddle with my dog.