Just take a long lunch

Eevery morning at 7 a.m. my alarm blares that heinous new Will Smith song and by 8:30 a.m. I've gotten myself looking decent enough to stroll into the office with two Starbucks mugs of coffee. Somewhere in the time frame of 12:30 p.m., I take a lunch break during which I retreat to my couch for 50 minutes. By 5:30 p.m. I'm out the door of the office. If I can get myself off the couch, I'm usually on the Stairmaster by 6:30 p.m., eating dinner by 8 p.m. and in bed by 10:30 p.m. Thank heaven Desperate Housewives and The O.C. seasons have ended for the time being.\nThis is a typical day in the life of ... me. I'm a copywriting intern at the Bloomington-based advertising agency, Finelight. Two of our big accounts include Metropolitan Jewish Health System and Elderplan. In other words, I write articles all day long for geriatric foundations, an issue that doesn't quite relate to my generation just yet. But I guess I gotta start somewhere, right? \nBeing a native New Yorker, I interviewed this past spring for internships in both New York and Bloomington. Unsure whether or not I wanted to return home for the summer or stay in B-Town, I weighed my options:\nGoing home to New York meant commuting to and from the city every day, being too tired when I got home to drag myself to the gym, living in the house with my parents who are also in bed by 10:30 p.m. and sitting at the pool on the weekends. Oh, and I'd have a career-altering internship.\nOption No. 2: I could stay in Bloomington and basically walk to work (Finelight is located in Fountain Square Mall), get to the gym on a daily basis, sit outside Kirkwood for happy hour (which I have yet to do) and play on Lake Monroe for the summer. \nIn other words, to play or not to play? I chose to play. \nLittle did I know that just because I chose the internship that would keep me in Bloomington for the last summer of my college career, did not mean that I would actually get to do any of that playing. In bed by 10:30 p.m. is not exactly what I call playing. I think there comes a point, it's somewhere around now for me, we need to realize that one day soon this will be our lives. Only with one small adjustment, Mom and Dad won't be paying our $157 Cinergy bills.\nWhat I've realized from all of this is that life creeps up on us. We need to abstain from both consuming ourselves in needless drama and looking too far into the future. Want to know why? Because it will come -- yes that is right, the future will come. As my parents have told me on numerous occasions -- make a decision and stick with it, don't look back and wonder what would have been had you gone with the other option, be happy. \nSo what's a transitional college kid to do? Live in the present, take an hour and 15 minutes for lunch and sneak out of the office at 5:15 p.m.