How I Came to be Young, Married, and Broke

I was twenty when I graduated college with two degrees with top honors and an engagement ring on my finger.  I, like most fresh college graduates, was somehow under the impression that I both knew it all and would be able to achieve absolutely anything and everything that I desired.  After all, what was all that hard work for if I was not, with my two bachelor's degrees, now the foremost authority on at least the subjects in which I majored?  Ah, the arrogance of youth!

After making the decision to postpone my career/further schooling/whatever dream I desired to chase for myself until after my marriage the following November (eleven months from when I graduated), I spent a year and a half in jobs that I knew I would not want to pursue for the rest of my life.  I both waitressed and worked in a low-end professional job, for quite some time simultaneously.  You see, to me life is supposed to be hard work and saving the fruits of that labor.  Call it a Calvinist mindset or the product of my Granny's Old Southern Lady contempt for idleness or simply that I'm a high energy person; if I was not going to be pursuing a definitive end-goal at that exact moment, then I wanted to at least bring in some major money for the future life with my Hubby-to-Be.

However, as the wedding loomed nearer, I began to realize exactly how little time I was spending with my affianced.  So I quit the waitressing and stuck to the professional job, ye olde regular Monday thru Friday, 9 to 6, in order to insure that I had scheduled weekend time with the Love. It meant a pay cut, because I can honestly earn more as a waitress, but I can't earn time.  However, it was just a few months into that professional job and overtime became almost mandatory in order to keep up with the double workload that corporate decided to dump on their satellite offices, and whether or not I had a waitressing gig didn't seem to matter anymore.  I was still working upwards of 60 hours per week, more if you included travel time through the molasses-like moving blob that is rush hour traffic, and sometimes even taking home extra work on the weekends.  

A wedding and a year later, I quit that job to go back to, yup, you guessed it, waitressing.  I blame the fact that when I finally did go back to school in order to get my Master's degree, my professional job was not accommodating enough for morning classes.  And to some extent, this is true.  However, I love the physical demands of being a waitress (if you think it isn't physical, you try power walking/almost jogging for 8-14 hours per day and lifting 10-30 pounds every time you leave the kitchen!), the interaction with people, and the romance of it.

You see, that's where the Hubby and I met, when I was 19 and waitressing my way through undergrad.  And there's something about me that thinks it waxes poetic to be back in the service industry while I continue with my Master's degree and he comes and sits in my section as if we are courting again.  The first year of us knowing one another was exclusively in the confines of the same restaurant in which I once again work, and it is nice to have that familiar atmosphere around us, that reminder of the first time our hands touched and the passing of phone numbers for our first date.  Plus, it is awfully funny to see new waitresses sidle up to him, ready to attempt to flirt a tip out of him, when he calmly explains that he's here to see the waitress that tried to do that once upon a time and somehow ended up his wife.

And thus are the beginnings of my story.  I am young, married, and broke.  However, I am loving life and living it to the fullest, pursuing my dreams with the man that means everything to me supporting me the whole way.  I'll make better money eventually, right now I'm worried about making memories.