I Need To Knock Some Heads Together

I think I mentioned in passing the Epic Financial Aid Failure of Fail a few weeks ago, didn't I? If I didn't, what happened, more or less, was that I was Axcess looking at my aid for next year, and my Expected Student Contribution seemed really high. So I called the financial aid office, and some jerk totally blew me off and told me I had nothing to worry about because the numbers weren't final. So I waited to get my aid letter and see if the problem would fix itself.

...Yeah, not so much. I got my aid letter last week, and my ESC is $13,000. That's the amount of money the school expects me to cough up this year. I have...about $3500 to my name, at the moment. And my dad's contribution to the cost of my education consists of occasionally buying me airline tickets and sending me groceries; my mom's contribution is funny newspaper articles and listening to me whine. So $13000? NOT HAPPENING. Which would be why I've spent most of this week having panic attacks and not being able to sleep. Ugh.

Today I finally got through my I DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH THIS MAKE IT GO AWAY barrier and sucked it up enough to call the financial aid office again. Guy I talked to this time was much more helpful, in the sense that he had an actual conversation with me and didn't just parrot a script back at me until I got sick of it and hung up. Consensus seems to be (shocking, I know) that this is the fault of the Colossal Tax Cock-Up from earlier in the year (I know I ranted about that at great length), which made the university think I had vastly more money than I do or ever have.

So now I need to find a fax machine so I can fax the financial aid office my W-2s and my 1040 and a cover letter explaining that the actual money I actually earned through my actual job and thus actually have only amounts to about $5000, and everything else they think I have and thus are basing my fucked-up aid amount on is money THEY GAVE TO ME BASED ON HOW MUCH MONEY I DON'T HAVE YOU ASSTARDS. God, this is mind-burningly stupid.

I really hope I can get this worked out. I have to - I can't afford to go to school if I can't. God, I hate my life right now.

Go Go Coping Mechanisms

So I've really gotten out of the habit of meditating, since it's such a pain at school - it's always noisy, or busy, or I'm worried my roommate will come back and think I'm a weirdo. And I haven't done any ritual work in ages, so it hasn't come up in that context. And I'm mega-lazy, there is that. Once in a while I think about it and feel kind of lame for not bothering to do it more often, but...then I still don't.

But the last week or so I've been pretty insanely frazzled - the financial aid thing, and worrying about my grades next year, and stressing about my writing - just a whole mess of things I'm freaking out about, and then I get freaked out about freaking out, and then I'm just a big ball of neurosis and crying at people on the internet (as you may have noticed, people who have to listen to me angst). I've not been doing so well with the coping thing, is my point here. Mentally, I'm kind of feeling like a fuzzy, worn-through piece of yarn. But this evening I was sitting here, feeling miserable and sorry for myself, and I thought hey, maybe I should take a few minutes and do some meditating.

So I turned off the big light in my room, snagged my altar candles and their tiles, and took half an hour to do a simple grounding-and-centering exercise. Nothing terribly fancy, since even when I try my damnedest at meditating I'm a bit easily distracted. Just visualization and breathing and more breathing, and then at the end a brief invocation for guidance - I like ending with the Goddess and I could certainly use the help right now. And, um, I feel better, mentally/emotionally speaking, than I have all week? A lot more calm, and, well, grounded. Imagine that.

MEDITATION: I SHOULD DO THAT MORE.

(I'm also thinking I ought to do some kind of working before I go back to school re: my terminal focus/procrastination issues and dealing with that better. My favorite books are in California, but I do have a good few here, I'm going to have to see what I can find.)